


After The Storm

by Hederah



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Post-Game, Save The Bay, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-03 22:35:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 21,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6629731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hederah/pseuds/Hederah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay.  Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell.  Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase.  But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own.  Or is she?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Rains Come

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work uploaded to AO3 and my first foray into the LiS fandom. I've fallen hard for Chasefield though, and I just had to write it. Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!

“And Max Caulfield? Don’t you forget about me…”

“Never.”

Max watched through the torrential rain as Chloe backed away quickly, as though any hesitation would stop her in her tracks, and disappeared around the corner of what remained of the Arcadia Bay lighthouse. Behind them, a massive tornado churned through the water of the bay, bearing down on the town. In no more than a few minutes, the sleepy village would be nothing more than a pile of broken sticks. Max watched her go, heart in her throat, as she clutched her best friend’s last request tightly between both hands, the photograph that had started all of this. A blue butterfly perched on the handle of a metal bucket, with a slight reflection of the photographer behind. 

Max smiled, in spite of herself, at the damp polaroid. The butterfly was the same color as Chloe’s hair. She turned to face the storm, holding the picture up in front as though it was a camera, and peered through the viewfinder. 

\---

**BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP**

Max’s eyes snapped open, like loose shutters in a storm. She reached blindly for the phone and silenced the alarm with a practiced sort of nonchalance.

It had only been a month since Chloe’s funeral, which meant a month and a half since…

“Never,” she repeated, under her breath. 

Out the window, a gray sky hinted at rain, or at least a dreary day, which matched Max’s own mood. The dreams had started just after her last jaunt through time, and had occupied her sleeping mind ever since. Maybe her power had brought her an extra week with Chloe, but it also brought memories that could haunt her. She rolled over, pulling the blanket tight around her shoulders and stared at her wall of polaroids. Her vision blurred and for a second she could almost see crimson words splashed carelessly across them, NOBODY MESSES WITH ME BITCH. She blinked and it was gone. 

Another class missed, another day spent lying in her bed, or on her computer. Brown hair stuck up in all directions, a reminder that she hadn’t showered. But what was the point?  
_You’re just going to space out again, earth to Max_

She stuck her tongue out at the imaginary self berating her. Save it for someone who cares, Caulfield.

**Tap Tap**

She slowly rotated her head towards the door, hoping she had maybe dreamed it.

**Taptap**

Nope, definitely happening.

“Hello?” Her voice came out scratchy and hoarse, likely from disuse. 

“I’m not going to talk to the fucking door, Max. Open it.”

The clipped, consistently annoyed voice on the other side was distinctive and unmistakable. Max got up, cursing her tired bones, and ambled across the carpet, stepping over piles of discarded laundry. God, her room was a mess. 

“Any day now, Caulfield,”

She pulled open the door and was greeted by the thin, immaculate figure of Victoria Chase carrying an armload of books. She gave Max an odd look, eyes narrowing as they surveyed her from top to bottom. 

“Y… yes Victoria?”

The taller girl opened her mouth as if to say something, a wicked smile forming on her face as she gave Max another once-over. The shorter girl, recognizing the look, braced herself. But Victoria just frowned at her and thrust the pile of books in her direction. Max looked down at them dumbly, taking two books labeled “Chemistry”.

“Fucking take them, Max Dorkfield. You didn’t show up to class and Ms. Grant gave me your homework.”

“...why?”

“I don’t know, dipshit, maybe because you live across the hall from me?”

Victoria sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“If I had known you were going to fucking rake me over the coals maybe I wouldn’t have volunteered.”

Max ran a finger along the spine of the books, trying to shift her brain back into gear.

“Wait, you volunteered?”

Victoria shot her a withering look.

“Fuck off Max Caulfield. You don’t get to make this about me. Go to fucking class or I swear I will skin you alive.”

And with that, she spun on her heel and disappeared into her room, slamming the door behind. 

Max stood in the doorway, speechless, before suddenly realizing she hadn’t even dressed today. She slammed her own door self-consciously and dumped the books on her couch before falling back onto her bed. 

_Well that was the weirdest conversation ever._

\---

**BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP**

Golden light filtered through the blinds, filling the small dormitory with a honeyed haze that reminded her of homemade pancakes and warm smiles. Maybe she felt a little better today, maybe.

A few minutes of staring at the ceiling bought her the energy she needed to swing first one leg, then the other, over the side of the bed, and she pulled herself into a sitting position before losing all desire to move again. Across the room, Lisa the plant bathed in the morning sun, looking about as dead as Max felt. 

“Shit, I’m sorry Lisa,” she muttered, finding the motivation to move again. 

As she doused the drying soil, Max glanced out the window across the small grassy area outside, still quiet and empty of students, for the moment. It wasn’t likely to fill up for another few hours at least; there were no classes on Saturday. 

Not that Max would have noticed. Everything passed in a bit of a haze as of late. She woke up, ate breakfast at a corner table by herself, idled through what class she did attend on autopilot, and found herself back in her room at the end of the day with barely any acknowledgement of time passing. The school psychologist had called it trauma from seeing Chloe shot, but there was more to it than that. Much more. 

_Taptap_

Max stumbled across the room to collect her shower things and her towel, and ignored the light tap that may as well have been silent. 

**Tap tap**

She stopped, halfway to grabbing her bathroom tote, and stared at the door. 

“Hello?”

There was silence, for a moment.

“Uh,” came the response, almost timidly. 

The mystery tapper seemed to gather themselves before speaking again.

“Max, are you doing all right?”

Max almost dropped her towel.

“Victoria?”

On the other side of the door she heard an exasperated sigh.

“Can I just come in, or do you sleep in the nude, Nerdfield?”

Max looked down at her pajamas, an old t-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts.

“Okay..?”

The door snapped open to admit a very tired-looking Victoria Chase. The queen bee of Blackwell, who always looked fashionable to the point of severity, whose eyebrows were always on point, who never left her room without at least a grand in designer clothing, shuffled into the room in nothing but a wrinkled tank top and pajama pants. 

Max gawked at the sight.

Victoria glanced around the room, and the corner of her mouth twitched slightly before she settled her gaze on Max’s couch. 

“Mind if I sit?” she said, as she half-sat, half-fell onto the cushions before getting an answer.

“Not at all…”

Max, feeling finally returning to her body as the shock began to wear off, noticed her arm was still outstretched towards the tote in her closet. Embarrassed, she dropped it quickly and tried to slide over to the bed in an expedient fashion landing heavily on the mattress in a rather uncoordinated way.

_Nice one, Super Dork. Can’t even sit down._

However, when she looked up, Victoria was simply staring at her, dark eyes probing like the lens of a camera.

“Why are you here?”

Victoria blinked once, twice, then three times, almost as though caught off balance by the directness.

“You haven’t been to class this past week.”

“And why do you care?”

Victoria frowned, a mix of emotions playing out on her face. She shifted her weight forward.

“Fuck it, I’m just going to go.”

“Wait,” Max held up her hand on reflex, half expecting the pressure to start building in her head like it did before. 

Victoria did stop moving, but not due to any temporal manipulation. She simply sat on the edge of the couch, waiting.

“I… you don’t even like me, Victoria. Why do you care about me going to class?”

Victoria sighed and leaned back again.

“I never said I didn’t like you, Maxine.”

“Max.”

“Whatever. I just don’t like seeing the only other decent photographer moping around all the time.”

“Wait, what?”

“You’ve seen what Daniel, or Warren, or hell, even Taylor calls art.”

Victoria sighed and looked down at the carpet between her perfectly manicured toes.

“You have an eye for pictures. Even if you waste it all on fucking selfies. I’d hate to see you fail out of Blackwell just because of something you had nothing to do with.”

“Seriously?”

Victoria looked up and nodded.

“Um, thanks, Victoria, I don’t know what to say.”

The taller girl stood up and stepped towards the door, giving her a brief smile.

“Just show up to class, Max. Don’t say anything.”

And with that, she closed the door behind her, leaving Max alone with her towel. 

\---

Kate Marsh almost spat milk all over the table. Collecting herself, she pressed a napkin gently against her nose, face crimson. 

“I’m cereal, Kate,”

“No, I know, Max,” Kate replied, wiping at her face, “But she came into your bedroom?”

The pair sat together in the dining hall, in the relatively secluded corner Max usually haunted on her own. But today was a special occasion. Today Max needed another ear.

“I don’t know, yes? It feels like I had to have been asleep. Victoria barely even looks at me anymore, especially with Nathan gone,”

Kate glanced across the room, where the subject of their chat was sitting. It seemed that her usual group of friends had yet to appear, so she was alone, for the moment.

“I just don’t know. She came in, told me to go to class, and left hella fast, like she was afraid she’d catch the dork or something.”

On the other side of the dining hall, Victoria pulled out her phone, presumably to figure out where Taylor or Courtney was.

“I don’t know, Max. I don’t trust Victoria. Not after the video.”

_Oh yeah, right._

It seemed like years ago, in another life, but even with all the time hopping, Kate had still been drugged at a Vortex Club party. Victoria had taken the video down quietly after Nathan was arrested, but it was clear Kate still held it against her.

_Which makes sense, that’s so shitty to do._

“What would she gain by telling me to go to class? Maybe her favorite target, back up on the firing line.”

Though it seemed in the wake of all that had happened, even Victoria Fucking Chase wasn’t getting her kicks tormenting the less-popular. All of Blackwell was much more subdued. 

“I don’t know, Max. But watch out. I have bible study right now though, sorry.”

Kate got up with an apologetic smile and made a beeline for the door, avoiding Victoria’s end of the dining hall. Miss Queen Bee, for her part, seemed to be absorbed in her phone anyway, and didn’t notice. 

_Bzzt_

Max felt the vibration in her bag and yanked her phone free, wondering if Kate had forgotten something or Warren had some new geeky obsession. She prayed silently it wasn’t another Private Number.

>From: Victoria  
>Fucking finally. You better be in Photography.

Max looked up across the room to see the blonde girl grinning, or more accurately, smirking at her. Victoria dropped her phone into her own bag in a satisfied sort of way and turned her attention back to her breakfast. 

_Okay, shit is really getting weird._


	2. On My Knees And Out Of Luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay. Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell. Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase. But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own. Or is she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I discovered I don't have to upload in HTML, there's an option where I don't have to add tags and stuff and can just paste from Google Docs without it being a block of text! This format is much more to my liking and I may go back to edit the first chapter to bring it up to this standard. Maybe.

“Good to see you back, Miss Caulfield.  I hope you enjoyed your time off.”

Max almost immediately regretted her choice to return to class.  She stopped in the doorway, staring at the array of students before her, as well as the teacher.  Ms. Patel, who had replaced Mr. Jefferson after his dismissal, was staring back at her with her hands on her hips.  Max smiled weakly and shuffled to her desk, looking at her feet.  

_ Bzzt Bzzt _

Mr. Jefferson did not tolerate cell phones in his classroom, and Ms. Patel was no different, so Max ignored the text and dropped her bag onto the stony surface of the desk.  

“As I was saying, Alfred Stieglitz was extremely important to the…”

Once again Max slipped into the easy rhythm of class, or rather paying attention to anything but.  She pulled her journal from the bag and started doodling a bit in the margins, trying for a sketchy approximation of the teacher, who was midway through explaining something about famous galleries.  

_ Bzzt Bzzt _

It always seemed that she got the most messages whenever she was the busiest and it appeared today was no exception.  Internally dropping her head onto her desk, she made sure Ms. Patel was focused elsewhere and dropped her phone off the table into her lap.  

 

>From: Victoria 

>So Max Selfie isn’t as dead as she looks

>Or maybe she is

 

Max grimaced and glanced over at Victoria’s table, where the blonde was focusing her attention on the teacher, her own phone not in view.

 

>Not dead yet, but I sure feel that way

 

Victoria glanced down at her desk, then looked over her shoulder with a bemused, slightly sour expression.  

 

>heaven forbid Max Caulfield show up to class for once

 

Max stuck her tongue out and returned to her doodling.  

“Excuse me, Miss Chase?”

Victoria turned sheet white and looked up to see their teacher staring down at her, palm extended.  

“I…”

“No cell phones in class, you know this.  You can get it back after the bell,”

Victoria shot Max a withering look as the teacher set her phone on a table at the front of the room, to which Max shrugged and slid her own phone back into her bag.  

Twenty minutes of class passed without further incident, besides the occasional over the shoulder scowl, and Max sank easily back into her reverie.  When the bell came, all of her things slid easily back into her bag and she headed for the door, glancing over at something etched into the next desk over.

 

Rachel Amber

4

Ever

 

She thought back to what seemed like years ago, shortly after her first experience with her powers, when she took a picture of the same etching.  She actually, through some twist of reality, had the picture in a box in her dormitory, alongside others she had taken in another reality.  All of it made her head hurt.  

Her vision swam in front of her, and a familiar sort of pressure built behind her eyes.  

“Ugh…”

She bent over at the pain, slamming her hands against the table, and watched as the etching twisted before her eyes.

 

Chloe Price

4

Ever

 

A solitary drop of crimson fell to the desk, spattering across the words, and they seemed to jump back into place, forming the original message again.

“Miss Caulfield?”

She wiped at her nose and lifted her hand away to find the dark color of blood smeared across her fingers.

_ This is not happening.  Not again.  Not… _

Ms. Patel seemed to run over in slow motion as Max’s field of view tipped sideways, blurring at the edges.  At the front of the room, Victoria’s eyes went wide, her expression changing slowly as time seemed to crawl.

And then all went dark.

 

* * *

 

_ Fuck. _

Victoria had not planned on losing her phone, especially not like some sort of freshman on their first day.  And of course it was for texting the thoroughly useless and awful Max Caulfield.  She had doubly not planned on the same girl falling over before even leaving the classroom.  As she ran towards the nurse’s office, thoughts raced through her head.

_ Of all the things to go wrong today _

_ Victoria Chase is nobody’s errand girl _

_ I hope she’s okay _

Shaking her head violently at the last one, she readjusted her bag and slammed a palm against the handle of the door.  Inside, the nurse looked up from her work, apparently not expecting any interruption.

“May I help you?”

Victoria took a deep breath to compose herself.

“Max Caulfield passed out in class and Ms. Patel sent me to get you,”

The nurse nodded and turned back around, not moving from her chair.

“So, are we going?”

The nurse scowled at her, pushing out of the chair.

“No need to get snippy, Miss Chase.”

_ Good to see the faculty is ready for emergencies, _ Victoria thought irritably.  

As the nurse finally gathered her things, Victoria stepped out into the hallway ahead, impatient with how slowly this was going.

_ It will be your ass if the dork dies. _

She hurried ahead, reaching the door to the art room well ahead of the older woman, and held the door open.  

“Thank you, Victoria,” 

“My pleasure,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

As the two adults set about their duties, assuming they had duties in the case hipster dweebs had fainting spells, Victoria slumped down into a nearby chair at the front of the room after retrieving her phone from the desk.

 

>To: Taylor

>I’ll be late to class.  Save me a seat, girl!

>Don’t tell me Ms. Patel gave you detention?

>Caulfield passed out, I had to help get her ass to the nurse

>I’m sorry?  Why are you helping that hipster slut?

>I'll TTYL, Taylor

 

Victoria sighed.  This entire day had gone to shit.  And now she had to stay here for the Selfie Ho of all people.  

“Victoria?”

She looked up to see the nurse standing over her.

“You can go to class, now, if you’d like,”

“No, I’ll stay,”

 

* * *

  
  


“What are you talking about?  You saved me from talking in class…”

Kate slumped against her, soaking wet just like the rest of the dormitory roof.  Max hugged her close, feeling the rain falling heavy on her skin.  The roof access door slammed open as a terrified-looking David Madsen burst forth.

“Maxine,” he whispered, his voice completely wrong.

“Maxine?” Kate whispered to her, in the same voice, cool and low.

 

* * *

 

“Max?”

She opened her eyes to find herself looking up, not at the gray Oregon sky, but instead at off-white ceiling tiles.  A shape moved to block one of the fluorescent lights, pulling her back to reality.

“Thank god,” the voice said.

“D… David…”

“Excuse me?  Don’t you dare compare me to that creepy security guard.”

“Victoria?”

“Better.”

Max pushed herself into a sitting position and glanced around the room, which her brain was just now registering as the nurse’s office.  A glass of water suddenly filled her field of view.

“Drink.  The nurse said you should when you woke up.”

Max took the glass and dumped it down her throat, which proved a mistake as she wound up coughing half of it back up.  Victoria ignored this and got up from the chair.  

“Next time you’re going to pass out, kindly do it when I’m not in the room, Maxine.”

“Wha…”

But Victoria was already on her way out the door.  The nurse entered just as quickly, and began grilling her with questions.  Max felt sick, but less from the headache and more from wondering what the hell was going on.  

 

* * *

 

 

After assuring the nurse she was neither pregnant nor anemic and promising she would be eating for the foreseeable future, Max found herself back in Blackwell’s halls with a few minutes to spare before her next class.  She felt well enough to go, and had missed the last one, so she headed off towards the science room.  Something about the empty halls reminded her of the last time she was here after hours, though she had no intention of blowing a hole in the principal’s door this time.  She passed a bulletin board and felt a vague sense of deja vu, forcing her to stop and glance over the posters.  

It came all at once, as though she had a sudden sinus headache, and the pressure built almost instantly to unbearable levels.  She felt as though she was about to fall over, but was unable to tear herself away from the board as it warped and twisted before her, as though reality itself was being torn asunder.  Gone were the flyers for Chess Club, replaced by Missing Person posters, plastered across the entire wall.  The same ones that had been there weeks ago.

She shouted and jerked backwards as her vision blurred again, and she fell against the lockers across the hall with a metallic BANG.  Just as soon as it started, the pain had stopped, leaving her alone in the empty hallway as though nothing had happened.  She forced herself to look up at the bulletin board again, and found that it was the same as before.  No flyers.  But down below, on the floor, rested a small object.  She edged over, as though it would jump up and bite her, and plucked it from the floor.  A piece of crumpled, torn paper, that when smoothed was unmistakable.  

 

Missing: Rachel Amber.

 

* * *

 

  
  
“Max Factor!  Heard you went to the nurse.  Everything cool?”

Warren Graham, her partner in Chemistry crime, slid his stool over to make room at the table.  Max was not good at anything science-related, so it seemed fitting that she find someone who practically breathed it.  

“I’m fine, Warren.  Just hella tired.”

“Hella?  Don’t tell me you’ve been hanging with Trevor?”

Max grinned, despite the ordeal in the hallway.  It was easy, the way they shot things back and forth.  Like old friends.  

“Not a chance, Bill Nye.”

Warren turned his focus back to the worksheet in front of him, satisfied for the moment.  Prior to all of the craziness, Max had to practically beat him back with a stick, forlorn puppy that he was.  But as of late, he seemed to have finally gotten the hint.  Rumor had it he had eyes for another student now.

_ Speaking of which… _

Brooke had been paired with Zachary, and was giving Warren a desperate look from across the room.  He made a kissy face back, much to Brooke’s apparent displeasure.  

“Looks like your science minion is running off with the football jock,”

“Hilarious, Max.  And she’s my science partner, not minion.”

Max forced an exaggeratedly hurt face.

“I thought I was your science partner!”

“Ladies, please, there’s enough Warren to go around!”

Max giggled and turned her attention to the worksheet in front of her.  Not like she could even pronounce stoichiometry, let alone do it.  Warren seemed like he was really getting some confidence now that he was pursuing someone who was remotely interested.  Sure, he had the puppy dog thing before, but he was more of a brother than a boyfriend.  

“Warren?  Doctor Strangelove?”

“Terribly done. It’s not like this is nuclear physics.”

“Might as well be,” Max muttered, crossing out yet another wrong answer, “what do you think about time travel?”

Warren stopped in his tracks.

“Like, H. G. Wells?  Or Donny Darko?”

“Just in general.”

“Are you serious?  Because if you’ve got a taste for the weird, I have the premier collection of films for just such an occasion.”

“I’m cereal, Warren, but no movies.  More just… theory.”

Warren stopped what he was doing and turned to her, giving her his full attention.

“I’m listening, Max Traveler.”

“Say someone can reverse time, what would that do to everything?  Would reality stay the way it is?  Or would it leave behind holes or tears or something?”

Warren’s eyes practically bulged out of his skull and his smile went wider than Max had ever seen before.  

“I think the stoich can wait,” he said.  

 

* * *

  
  


Max fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.  Warren had talked both her ears off about time travel and theories, and she felt no closer to the answer than when she started.  All she knew was that things from the other realities seemed to be coming back to her, and that it caused a lot of strain, almost like when she saved Kate.  Thankfully, her dreams were mercifully free of her memories, so when she woke it wasn’t with a start or in a cold sweat as she had almost gotten used to by this point.

The morning walk to the bathroom was surprisingly free of any interruptions, and she washed her hair in blissful silence.  It was only the arrival of Alyssa, dark circles ringing her eyes, that burst the bubble.

“Hey,” the other girl muttered as she passed.  No room for manners when you’re half-asleep it seemed.  

Max was almost smiling when she reached her room, and glanced at the whiteboard hanging next to the door.  It was blank at the moment, which seemed apt.  Except suddenly it wasn’t.  A sharp pain in her head, a waver in the air, and it suddenly displayed a worried stick figure under her name.  Just as it had been weeks ago, in another life.  

_ Oh shit _

Max stared at the board, focusing on the picture, trying not to yell out, hoping that the pain would subside.  As she focused, the picture coalesced, settling in place as if it had always been there.

_ Wowser _

Behind her, she heard a gasp.  She spun to see Victoria, standing open mouthed in the doorway across the hall.

“I…” Max sputtered, words failing her.

“What. The. Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this is good enough. I'm used to a longer chapter cycle myself, wherein I read it over and over and never release it, but I'm trying to get this out on a reasonable timescale. Thanks for reading!


	3. Not This Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay. Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell. Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase. But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own. Or is she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been reading a ton of other fics on here and, holy crap, a lot of them are horribly depressing. You have my solemn promise to not be quite so sad as that. Not promising it will be sunshine and rainbows though.

_Did Victoria just see that?_

Max fell back against her door inside her room, feeling it close behind her with a snap. The blonde was probably still staring at her, through the door.

_Could all this be real?_

Obviously, with all that had happened, she was not about to discount any more reality-warping events, but she had half-convinced herself this was just stress, or psychosis. Now? Not so sure. She grabbed her phone from its place on her bedside table and checked for texts from Warren.

>From: Warren Graham

>Ive got a couple of sources i emailed to u

>whats with the interest in spacetime anyway?

She tapped out a quick message

>Just read a book about it and got curious

Settling down in her desk chair, she opened Warren’s email to find a bunch of websites that seemed awfully familiar.

_Because I already read through them last time._

Frustrated at her lack of progress, she slapped her hand down on the corner of the desk, then regretted it as it tingled uncomfortably.

_Kind of like when…_

She held her hand out and concentrated, willing the flow of time to part around her.

WHOOSH

Her vision blurred around the edges, objects vibrating around her as the very fabric of the universe bent to her will. Her computer went back to sleep, the door opened, then closed again, and she dropped her hand in disbelief.

“...FUCK? FUCK!”

Out in the hallway, Victoria must have seen her literally blink out of existence, because stomping feet came right up to her door and it flew open.

“MAX CAULFIELD, WHAT JUST…”

Max simply stared at her, amazed that someone so collected could look this angry and confused at the same time. And then she raised her hand.

 

* * *

 

 

Victoria Chase dry swallowed her morning meds, already late for being early to class. Out into the hallway, down the stairs, and across campus. Just like clockwork. Except this time she was running ever so slightly late, and there was nobody to blame but herself. She pushed open her door and glanced across the hall. Max’s door was shut, and Victoria wondered if it was going to open soon.

As she marched down the dormitory hallway, she heard a click, signifying that Maxine Caulfield would actually be coming to class today as well. She smiled. Everything was returning to normal.

Except Maxine Caulfield pushed open the door in _front_ of her instead. Victoria’s mouth dropped open.

“It’s raining, you might want to bring an umbrella,” Max muttered, peering up at her.

_But it wasn’t raining at all! She had even double-checked the windows after her morning social media skim._

Victoria just stared at the smaller girl, gears whirling in her head as she struggled to wrap her mind around Max’s apparent ignorance of space and time.

“You’ll ruin your blouse,” she offered, less than helpfully.

But, true to her predictions, a rumble of thunder rolled over the roof, bringing with it the staccato chatter of raindrops on the windows.

“Um… thank you?”

Max simply grinned, pulled up the hood on her ratty old sweater, and headed down the stairs, leaving Victoria to wonder what had happened.

 

* * *

 

 

As soon as Victoria turned on her heel and went back for her umbrella, Max sighed and leaned back against the wall. Max had just seen her run down the stairs and trip on her way outside, leaving her flat on her face just in time for the rain to start. A thoroughly humiliating thing to watch, let alone experience. And of course, Super Max to the rescue. A wave of her hand and it hadn’t even happened.

But she wasn’t Super Max anymore. That name had died with Chloe, the last time she played with time. Memories of rushing wind and stinging rain came tumbling back. Arcadia Bay, wiped from the face of the earth.

“Not happening. Not this time,” she whispered to herself.

The stairwell door swung open, startling her and admitting a peeved-looking Victoria, carrying a dark green umbrella. Max slunk back into the shadows, but no dice. The umbrella jabbed into her chest.

“What are you doing, waiting for me? How absolutely precious,”

“I…” she gestured uselessly at the wall, “It’s raining.”

Victoria’s eyes shot immediately to the hood covering her head, then returned to her face, lips sinking into a frown. Max pulled the hood off sheepishly, having nowhere else to hide.

_No rewinding unless you have to, Max. Save Arcadia Bay and all that._

“So are you coming or not?”

“Huh?”

“To class, unless your hipster ass wants to get expelled.”

Taking the hint, she followed Victoria down the stairs and out the door, stepping gratefully under the umbrella. Oddly, the taller girl held it a bit lower as though she actually wanted to include her.

“Thanks,”

“Don’t mention it.”

The pair made their way across campus as the characteristic Oregon weather washed away the background noise.

“Seriously though, don’t mention it,” Victoria interjected, “I have a reputation to keep.”

Max murmured an affirmative, too quiet to hear.

 

* * *

 

 

Max sat back against her pillow with a pile of polaroids in front of her, covering the bed. Memories of those other places. Pictures of dead whales dotting the beach. Pictures of Warren, Alyssa, and Chloe.

Max’s throat squeezed tight at the last one. All of what she had seen, all of what she had been through, and it didn’t mean shit. None of it even happened. Except it did. From the tornado ripping apart buildings, to the antiseptic stink of the dark room. She shivered, skin crawling. No amount of therapy would get the creeping feeling of fear to leave.

She threw a few photos off the bed and collapsed backwards, staring up at her ceiling. It all seemed so pointless. Sure, she saved the town. And got Jefferson and Nathan arrested, sick fucks. But Chloe was still dead, and she was still expected to show up to class like she still gave a shit. Grabbing a random picture from the pile, she held it up, ready to tear when she noticed it had writing on the back.

To Maxine - “Wherever you go, there I am”

It was in an angular, precise script she couldn’t place, way unlike the cramped, messy letters of her own handwriting. She flipped the picture over.

And dropped it.

It was a selfie, which was no surprise. What was a surprise, however, was that there wasn’t a single subject. Centered, against a background that matched her bedsheets exactly, was the smiling face she recognized as her own, or at least one of the versions of her out there. But next to her? Victoria Chase, leaning in around her extended arm, and planting a kiss on Max’s cheek.

Max’s stomach flipped in her chest, wringing the air from her lungs.

_When did this get in there? Who put it there?_

But she already knew. Nobody called her Maxine in this reality, unless they were her mother. And she didn’t own that particular sweater, much too expensive for her taste.

“Hello, are you even listening, Maxine?”

Orange rays of sunlight fall across the front lawn at Blackwell. Maxine, no, Max turns to see Victoria leaning against her in a circle of Vortex Club members. She snaps her fingers in Max’s face.

“Max, never Maxine,” she replies, disoriented. Her clothes feel different, the air feels different, and the girl leaning on her shoulder definitely feels different.

“I know, sorry, Mad Max. You’re not pissed at me, right? Right?”

Max feels both wrong and right, all at once, like some sort of Schrodinger’s time traveller. Victoria smells really good.

“Do you want to hit the girl’s potty and smoke a peace pipe?”

Victoria’s eyes say something very different than her words. She squeezes Maxine...Max’s arm possessively.

“I think Max is high,” Courtney intones from somewhere above.

“She’s acting, like, so weird,” Taylor chimes in.

Victoria runs a hand across her shoulders, squeezing her closer.

“I think the bathroom is exactly what you need,” she whispers.

Maxine feels very warm. Victoria pulls her to her feet and leads her away from the group.

“I… I have to…”

Max pulls away abruptly. This is wrong. This is so wrong. But it feels so… She turns to walk away and is stopped by the strap of her camera bag.

“Max, what’s going on? You’re totally spaced.”

Max has no idea, and is suddenly falling, falling.

She lands hard on her bed, or at least it feels that way.

 

* * *

 

 

Max jerked awake, scattering polaroids across the floor. The morning sun shone dimly through the blinds. Her stomach roared in disapproval.

Deep in the center of her chest, something warm and bubbly slowly began to evaporate.

“Fuck,” she groaned, cursing the mess as well as her aching joints.

She rolled off the bed with a light _whump_ and set about gathering the photos. Stashing them in their box, she slid it under the bed, back into the corner where she could forget, for the time being.

Another shower, another trudge through the halls, another shirt and jeans pulled off the pile. Maybe she should make her bed. But there, lying next to her pillow, was that picture. Maxine and Victoria, sharing something she could not comprehend. She stuffed the picture into a drawer. Not today.

Today was Intro to Literature with Mrs. Hoida, who had rejoined the faculty at Blackwell a few weeks prior. And of course, Max hadn’t done the reading, leaving her to suss out what she could from her classmates’ answers.

“Now, can anyone tell me the significance of Stephen’s surname?”

Max stared dumbly at her copy of Ulysses. Maybe she should have read it instead of thinking about things that never happened.

“His last name is another spelling of Daedalus, the mythical Greek architect who built the Labyrinth,”

Stella loved this stuff, it was amazing how she absorbed literary knowledge like a sponge. Max felt kind of stupid in comparison. She could, of course, rewind and answer instead, seeing as she apparently had her powers again, but her mind filled with whipping winds and she put her head down instead.

_Why did she get her powers back? Why did she have them in the first place?_

The working theory bouncing around her head pointed towards Jefferson, and the Prescotts. The butterfly, the doe, and the storm pointed towards something supernatural. Maybe it was a bit of both. But for the weeks following Chloe’s death, she hadn’t been able to do anything. It was as though the universe wanted her to use them to uncover Rachel Amber, and had mysteriously taken them away after that was done.

_But the tornado…_

The tornado had come seemingly as a result of her tampering with the timeline, almost like some sort of butterfly effect. Going back and letting Nathan pull the trigger, that had stopped it. Back to status quo, minus all the memories in her head.

She was interrupted by the shrill chime of the bell, and allowed her eyes to refocus on the classroom. Everyone packed their things into their bags, stashed books under their arms, headed for the next class. Max needed a break before her next class started.

The rain had let up, with just a fine mist swirling through the air, so she wandered away towards the dormitories, feet leading her where they would. She walked, paying no attention to where she went, just running through the events leading up to the tornado for the hundredth time. A breeze passed, brushing across her almost like a hand, and she shivered involuntarily, realizing she had left the concrete paths crisscrossing Blackwell’s campus. She looked up to see the Tobanga, its many faces looming above her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement in the brush. Snapping her head around, she found herself face to face with a doe.

_No, THE doe._

It looked at her, swaying on the spot almost as if in a trance. Max reached out to touch it.

_CRACK_

Lightning split the sky overhead, jolting Max into consciousness. Water and mud pooled around her head and the scent of pine and thunder filled the air. Deja Vu.

 

* * *

 

 

When she woke next, it was almost the same, but this time she was cold. So very cold. A bright light shone down from above, calling to her. She reached out a shaking hand.

 

* * *

 

 The smell of fear and blood permeated the floor. Not three feet away, a dark stain marked the final resting place of Victoria Chase, murdered by the monster hovering above her. Max could barely move.

 

* * *

 

The rush of people and lights were dizzying. Something covered her mouth, sucking at her breath like empty vacuum. A concerned face flashed past, babbling in tongues.

 

* * *

 

 

“He’s got a gun!”

David rushed towards it, running on adrenaline, but Jefferson swung the tripod. It landed with a sickening crunch. Max strained at her bonds, tearing open reality another time. This time she would save him.

 

* * *

 

The room was quiet, a soft beeping and the whirr of the heater her only company. She looked up blearily to see sharp, hawklike eyes that sent a chill up her spine. A blur of dark clothing and red hair swung the door closed, and the nightmare was over.

 

* * *

 

The soft click of a closing door woke Max from what felt like being dead. She blinked, the light painfully bright. A thin sheet lay over her bare legs, and the coppery taste of blood coated the inside of her mouth. As the room faded into focus, her heart began to thrum in her ears, louder and louder. The pale blue of the walls and the spotless white of the floors were unmistakable. It had been what seemed like years since she last found herself in the hospital.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And wow, this chapter was kind of hard to write. Having all the dream/not real stuff going on is difficult to write, but it is leading somewhere. Be warned! And thank you for reading!
> 
>  
> 
> 04/05/16 v1: initial version  
> 09/05/16 v2: cleared up some confusion with Max needing a break between classes.


	4. I Took You By The Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay. Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell. Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase. But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own. Or is she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than the others by quite a bit, and doesn't have more than one scene, but this scene both needs to happen and doesn't fit thematically with what will be the next chapter. Consider this a bonus chapter of sorts, even if some nice stuff does happen in it.

>From: Victoria

>Where are u?

>Im not kidding

>u didnt go to class

>Youre not in your room

>Max Caulfield where the fuck are you

>If you dont answer in the next ten minutes Im getting security

Max scrolled through the messages in her phone as best she could, with her arm stuck straight out. The IV throbbed if she bent it.

>To: Victoria

>I’m in the hospital.

>But don’t…

The response came before she finished typing the message

>Don’t move

Max looked past her phone at her bare legs, under a thin hospital blanket.

>Not planning on it.

Her parents had driven the four hour drive from Seattle in three when they heard, and she had spent the past several hours enduring enough love and affection to more than fill up her tanks for the next year or so. Pop almost picked her up off the bed when he hugged her.

_If there was one thing she did have, besides her camera, it was her parents. It got easy to forget that out here in the woods._

The doctor had said Blackwell’s chief of security found her unconscious in the forest, on the brink of hypothermia.

_Which would be the second time David Madsen saved her life._

But what happened? She only remembered flashes, sounds, smells…

_The Doe._

She had seen the doe again. Samuel, the groundskeeper, called it her spirit animal. The last time she saw it was during the search for Rachel Amber, and it led her right to the body. But why was it back? Was it connected to her powers?

This line of thinking was interrupted by an orderly bringing in a tray of food, her afternoon snack, of sorts. She thanked him.

“Someone to see you,” he added, handing her the tray.

Behind him, walking cautiously into the room was a very tired-looking Victoria.

“You got here fast.”

Victoria ignored her comment and stalked over to her, face strangely blank. She stopped right next to the bed and reached out towards her, pointing a finger at Max’s chest. Max looked down at her hospital gown, suddenly self-conscious. But there was no stain, no nipple showing through the fabric, and no large spider crawling across her body. Victoria lowered her hand and tapped her finger lightly against Max’s stomach, as though making sure she was actually there.

She made contact and immediately pulled her arm to her chest as though the touch had burned her.

“Well hello to you too,”

“I’m sorry… it’s been a long day,”

Max watched as she let out a breath and pulled over one of the nearby chairs, left over from her parents.

“Well, thanks for coming by. Nobody else from Blackwell has yet.”

“Really? I’d think Kate would be here praying for your immortal soul or something.”

Max snorted, the image almost too ridiculous to picture. Victoria gave her a small smile, a crack in her usual stony exterior.

“So why are you here?”

Victoria looked down at her lap, where her hands were folded in a practiced, formal sort of way. The polish on one thumbnail was chipped, and she picked at it.

“You didn’t come to class, and I told you if you didn’t, I’d skin you alive.”

“I don’t see a knife.”

“Nathan took those with him,” Victoria said with the barest trace of venom.

She sighed at her finger and turned her gaze back to Max, dark eyes absorbing all the light in the room.

“You’re okay though? Not dying?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Max sat, confused, as she got up from the chair and took a few steps toward the door.

“Wait, hold on, Victoria.”

The taller girl stopped and turned to face her.

“Why are you really here? Why did you let me walk with you to class? Why did you come into my room last week? Why are you being…”

Victoria fidgeted, still standing in place.

“Nice?”

“I…”

She looked towards the door, and Max was momentarily afraid she would run for it. Hell, she would understand. And then probably rewind. But Victoria didn’t. She looked down at her feet, then shuffled back to the chair and fell into it heavily.

“I don’t know, Max. After all that shit with Nathan… he killed your friend.”

Victoria refused to even look at her, shoulders slumping out of their usual posture. She looked lonely, afraid.

“He killed her, and I should have seen it. I knew he was getting bad. Worse than usual. He was off his meds, ranting about shit. And I didn’t stop him.”

She sniffed, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her sweater. Max had never seen Victoria Chase cry.

“I have some tissues,” she offered, grabbing the box from her table and holding it out. Victoria ignored her.

“After Nathan was arrested, and then Mr. Jefferson, with all those girls… The Vortex Club fell apart. I had nothing. And nobody to talk to,” she grabbed a handful of tissues and dabbed at her face, smearing her mascara.

“What about Taylor? Or Courtney?”

Victoria laughed wetly into the tissue.

“You think they would want to see me like this? I’d be a fucking pariah ten minutes after they uploaded the first picture.”

Max’s mind raced. This was not how she saw this going.

“But… you took Taylor to see her mom?”

“And how do you know that?”

“I… I talked to her about it.”

_Shit, wrong timeline._

Victoria blew her nose.

“You didn’t come to class and I thought, great, now it’s my fault fucking Caulfield is depressed. It’s my fault she’s going to fucking kill herself.”

“I am not going to kill myself!”

“You sure tried last night.”

“That wasn’t…”

“I fucking watched you, Max. You wandered off into the woods, in the rain. I went and got the security guard after you didn’t come back.”

“Wait, you got David... Mr. Madsen?”

“What am I supposed to do? You’re the only one at Blackwell who gives a shit. You don’t play the bullshit games like everyone else, and I let Nathan rip out your heart!”

Max found herself tearing up as well, and put a hand on Victoria’s shoulder. The taller girl flinched at the contact, but didn’t push her away.

“It’s okay, Victoria. It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

They sat in silence, only interrupted by the occasional sniffle from behind a tissue. Max rubbed Victoria’s shoulder, not really knowing how else to comfort her.

“Shit. Fucked up my mascara.”

Max laughed softly.

“Sorry. I don’t usually do this with an audience.”

“It’s okay. It can be nice to let it out with someone who will listen.”

Victoria looked up at her, face a wreck, but an uncharacteristic warmth in her dark eyes.

“Thanks.”

“You did save my life.”

Victoria’s lip quivered.

_Shit, wrong thing?_

But it passed. Victoria just wiped away at the dark smears around her eyes. She looked almost like a real person without her usual mask in place.

“You’re going to be back at school tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah. Doctor is just holding me to make sure I don’t pass out again.”

Victoria looked at her with concern, or maybe something else.

“Come by my room after class. I promise I won’t do… that again,” she indicated the pile of tissues on the bedside table.

“Of course I will.”

With that, Victoria gave her a genuine smile that warmed Max’s heart and headed towards the door.

As she left, the orderly came back in to collect the food tray, which was sitting, untouched, on the bedside table.

“It’s good that you have a friend who cares about you so much,” he said, “she’s been here all night since you were admitted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Victoria was there all night? Maybe that's why she's so tired! For the record, I tend towards not really telling all of the story, as that's not how life works. People only reveal what they're comfortable revealing, and Victoria is not really comfortable telling Max just exactly what happened after she passed out this time. I'm spending a lot of time inside both Victoria and Max's heads lately. Gotta stay in character!
> 
> It's also worth mentioning that I didn't have a plan in mind when I started writing this, beyond a few big narrative points. It's slowly coalescing into an actual story now, and I'm rather proud of the fact that my unorganized ass is considering making outlines.
> 
>  
> 
> 08/05/16 v1: initial version  
> 08/05/16 v2: mixed up Courtney and Taylor. Oops!


	5. What We Lived For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay. Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell. Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase. But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own. Or is she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter basically wrote itself, even if half of it was written a while back in a previous version of Chapter 3. Which might explain why it's coming so soon after the last one. Do I intend to set a schedule? Hell no, I'm too flaky for one of those. Enjoy!

Victoria slammed her car door shut and jammed her key into the ignition. Her hand shook, which was entirely out of the ordinary, and she willed it to stop. But then again, nothing had been ordinary lately. First Nathan finally snaps, then Jefferson turns out to be a fucking psychopath, and now even Maxine Fucking Caulfield is slipping into insanity. If she could go back in time and tell herself what had happened, she would never have believed a word of it.

>From: Taylor

>Vic, where u at? :P

Victoria willed her hands to stop shaking again. It was getting annoying.

>To: Taylor

>Had to go up to my parents. Kill me

>lol, okay. Ur l8 btw

Victoria sighed and flipped down the sun shade to check her makeup.

_Ugh. Hideous._

Willing her hands to stop shaking a third time, she pulled a disposable wipe from inside her bag and swiped away at the dark smears around her eyes. It was then that reality finally hit her.

_I just fucking cried in front of Max Caulfield._

She stopped dabbing and watched as her brown eyes grew considerably larger in the mirror, and her vision blurred as tears began to form again.

_Oh fuck, not this again._

But much as she tried to rebuild the wall she had constructed around her emotions, it was no use, and the tears began to flow freely. She dropped the wipe, her hands starting to shake again, and this time she didn’t stop them, just clutched them to her chest and dropped her head onto the top of the steering wheel.

Nathan Prescott, her best friend. Nathan Prescott, the boy she had known since she arrived in Arcadia Bay. Nathan Prescott, who was among the only people who knew her deepest secrets.

She sobbed, her forehead rubbing uncomfortably on faux leather.

Nathan Prescott, who had stopped coming by her room. Nathan Prescott, who had stopped taking his medication. Nathan Prescott, currently in jail for murder.

Her phone chimed, probably a reminder, or a text, or an email. It didn’t matter.

She glanced up at the building in front of the car, light gray with a red cross illuminated on top. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been here before. She was no stranger to hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists. But something about today was different. She choked on a laugh.

Of course there was something different. The pale sliver of a girl currently occupying room 306, roughly twenty feet above her. Maxine Caulfield was such an enigma to her. Where Victoria came from, Max’s spotty attendance, mediocre GPA, and general lack of fashion sense would earn her a stern lecture on her potential and her parents’ legacy. And yet, when Victoria watched Max’s parents come in from her waiting room vigil, there had been nothing but love. Her father, a burly, bearded man, had looked on the verge of tears entering the hospital room. Her mother, practically a mirror of her daughter, was a bit more collected, but there had been no lectures. Nobody told Max how this reflected on her family. Nobody reminded her of squandered potential.

“I’m being really fucking bitter today,” Victoria muttered to nobody but herself.

She pushed herself back against the seat, reaching across unconsciously to buckle herself in, and twisted the ignition. The car rumbled to life, headlights casting shadows under the rain butts.

_It’s always fucking rain._

She pulled out onto the road, heading back towards campus, and almost immediately punched a button on the console, releasing quiet guitar from the speakers to cover up a silence that scratched at her mind.

_It's empty in the valley of your heart_

_The sun, it rises slowly as you walk_

Sure, it was hipster bullshit, but it was soothing on her increasingly frayed nerves. And it seemed like something Caulfield would listen to.

And just why did that matter? Victoria honestly wished she knew. There was something about Max that just seemed to bend space and time around her. Which sounded really stupid when it was put that way, but there wasn’t really another way to describe it. When teachers called on her, she would bring everything in class to a halt, regardless of whether she knew the answer or not. She flitted from group to group, talking in that low, not-trying-to-intrude voice she seemed to be perfect at, and never attracted any ire. Max Caulfield was simply not the sort of person you could hate.

And Victoria hated it.

 

* * *

 

 

It was what she knew. Social situations were always a game. An elaborate strategic combat, where the players found and exploited weaknesses to stay on top and the coolest head won. Victoria had been playing longer than most, learning to fortify her heart against attacks and feints, as well as how to bite back, when necessary. Nathan had been one of her staunchest allies, helping her learn what would put others on the back foot, gain her an advantage. Must have learned it from his father. So when the hippie showed up, it was almost too easy. Her fashion sense screamed “whatever was on top today” and she carried around a vintage polaroid in a beat-up messenger bag. Her hair was a disheveled mop, and she was even quieter than the new religious girl. Victoria saw her chance.

But for all her training, all her time spent gaming the social system, Victoria had finally found her match. She would ridicule Caulfield’s selfies, and Max would ignore it, going on to take even more, as a show of apparent defiance. Victoria would call her a hipster, a waif, even outright accuse her of playing the same game. But Max would just look up at her with the word “WHY” written across her expression, and Victoria would leave, frustrated. She had privately vowed to figure out exactly what, if anything, could penetrate Max’s defenses.

But then, of course, came the shooting. And suddenly Max wasn’t in class. Victoria had gone to the funeral, alone, and found herself standing next to a coffin containing a girl she had never known. Max stood across from her, next to some geek friend of hers, probably her boyfriend, and looked down at her feet. Victoria did the same. But when it came time for everyone to leave, Victoria stayed behind. She watched as the rest left, and took a last glance at the coffin before trudging her own way towards her car. But Max had been waiting at the cemetery gate.

“Thanks for coming,”

“Of course. I’m… I’m sorry.”

And she had meant it, god, she had meant it. Nathan had been her friend, and she could have done something, but she hadn’t.

“It’s okay.”

And Max had touched her shoulder, and they had made eye contact, and for the briefest moment, Victoria felt as though Max knew exactly who she was. The girl who she had berated and insulted looked at her as though she understood all of it. And that had shaken Victoria.

 

* * *

 

 

Victoria stared at her computer screen, eyes fixated on a point roughly half an inch behind it. She shook her head, bringing them back into focus. If the essay wouldn’t write itself, she would have to write it instead. She rested her fingers on the keys, her mind whirling into motion when suddenly…

_Knock knock_

All motion stopped, like air let out of a tire, and she closed her eyes, sighing.

“Yes?”

There was silence, for a moment, then a quiet voice.

“It’s me.”

Max had gotten back from the hospital only a few minutes before, and had only bothered to dump her bag in her room before keeping her promise. She waited, expecting silence, or worse, rejection. The door swung open suddenly, startling Max, who found Victoria looking at her expectantly.

“Please, come in.”

Max entered the room for her third time ever, though clearly her first time in this timeline. It was mostly the same, including the glow-in-the-dark figurine atop the desk. She stood in the center, unsure where she should sit.

“...where should I…”

“Couch is open.”

And so it was. Max sat, rubbing her hands on her thighs nervously, and waited for Victoria to begin what was sure to be an awkward conversation. Except Victoria didn’t, she just fell onto the bed and stared back, chewing her lip.

“So…”

“About yesterday…”

Both spoke nearly simultaneously, and Victoria looked scandalized. She quickly reset her expression and spoke again.

“About yesterday. I’m sorry I blew up all over you. It’s been a really stressful week.”

“It’s okay, Victoria. It’s been stressful for me too.”

Victoria snorted.

“Yeah, stressful. You fucking passed out twice.”

“Yeah. It’s just stress. Don’t mean to worry you.”

“Mhmm.”

Max looked down at her feet.

“When exactly did I start worrying you, anyway?”

“What? When you stopped coming to class!”

“Why does that matter? To you I mean?”

“Were you listening yesterday, or were you high on fucking vicodin? I’m not going to say it again.”

Max frowned and looked up at her.

“It’s not your fault Nathan pulled the trigger. He did that himself.”

“Yeah, but what if he didn’t? What if I had stopped him?”

Victoria was caught completely off guard when Max choked out a laugh.

“What’s so fucking funny, Caulfield?”

“If you only fucking knew, Victoria.”

“Enough with the cryptic bullshit. And enough with the wandering off to your death. If I hadn’t come after you…”

“You came after me?”

Victoria’s eyes got very big suddenly, as she realized what she had said.

“I didn’t… I saw…”

But it was too late. Cat out of the bag.

“Shit.”

“Victoria, I’m not going to judge you, believe me. You saved my life by doing that.”

Victoria sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“After Nathan left, and the Vortex Club fell apart, I just felt… broken. And after a few weeks it didn’t go away. Everyone else was moving on, and I couldn’t.”

She slumped back over onto her pillow, swinging her legs up onto the bed.

“I saw you walking like a zombie to class and back, and I thought maybe…”

She let out a big sigh and stared up at her ceiling.

“I thought maybe I could talk to you about it.”

Max scooted down the length of the couch to the end closest to Victoria.

“That’s what we’re doing now, right?”

“Goddamn it, Max Caulfield. You’re a fucking geek. You should be off with that Warren guy discussing chemistry class. Or praying with Jesus Girl. This, the two of us, it just isn’t going to work.”

“Why not?”

Victoria seemed to think about this for a moment, chewing on her lip again.

“It’s not that easy, is it?”

Max looked up from her shoes to see Victoria looking directly at her, the barest hint of vulnerability showing.

“It can be, I guess,” she mumbled back.

Victoria rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling again.

_No, get out of here, hippie freak_

The old deflections popped immediately to mind, but she found that she couldn’t justify it. The girl sitting on her couch, not even three feet away, would never leave her alone. And it wasn’t like Taylor would understand. On her desk, in her facebook messages, Taylor had been posting a play-by-play of Juliet’s phone call with her parents. It seemed so pointless.

“Well then what the fuck are we going to talk about?” she finally blurted out, before she changed her mind.

“You asked me to come here, Victoria.”

“Oh, right.”

_Well that was stupid, wasn’t it? Can’t even remember why she’s here._

“It’s okay. I can go if you need some alone time.”

“No, wait.”

Victoria choked on the last word, realizing she sounded almost desperate. She glanced over to gauge Max’s reaction, to see if she really had fucked this up, but the shorter girl was unreadable as ever. But Max wasn’t moving from the couch.

“I… shit, everything is just… weird right now. And you’re not.”

“I’m not weird?” Max asked, looking extremely skeptical.

“That’s not what I meant. Shit is just all over the place and you’re still the same tasteless hipster you always are, so it makes things feel not so weird.”

“Is this why you’ve been following me then?”

Victoria looked scandalized.

“I have _not_ been following you.”

Max sighed and leaned back against the cushions behind her.

“I passed the hell out twice in the last few days, and both times you were there to help. You’ve been texting me and not being…” she waved her hand loosely through the air.

“A bitch.”

Max nodded.

“As much as you might like to think, I don’t hate you, Max. You’re a good photographer and for whatever reason you don’t take my shit.”

Victoria bit her lip.

“I don’t mean it, you know.”

“I do. Believe me.”

Max’s head was filled with pulsing music, dizzying lights. Victoria Chase, standing in front of her, condemned to death at the hands of Mr. Jefferson. Victoria, admitting that she was actually jealous of her. She blinked.

“I don’t know why I do it, I’ve always done it. Everything is about who you are and who you know. And I have the unfortunate privilege of knowing all of them.”

Victoria was looking up at the ceiling, still letting bits and pieces of herself squeeze through the cracks, and Max felt a very similar feeling. She knew exactly what Victoria was trying to say, because she had heard it before, from a different version of her. An image flashed across her mind, a crimson stain on a white floor. She purged it and opened her mouth to speak, the pressure almost too much to bear. But was this what she wanted to do?

Sure, she could rewind if it went wrong, but could she even deal with that again? The memories of an entire week that never happened to anyone else were growing to be too much to bear, and she felt ready to explode. And for some reason the only person who seemed to be willing to listen was Victoria Chase.

“I need to tell you something,” she said suddenly.

Victoria sat up.

“I guess it is sharing time,” she said softly.

“I… fuck.”

All went silent for a moment.

“You… fuck?”

Max instinctively stuck her hand out as the words piled up in her throat, unable to leave her mouth. Space and time bent, then broke, as she rewound without even thinking. She immediately caught herself and pulled her own arm down with her other one, causing the universe to kick back into motion.

“I guess it is sharing time,” Victoria said, softly.

“I…”

_Just say it, Max. You can always rewind. Just. Do. It._

She took a deep breath.

“This is going to sound crazy, but you’ve told me this before.”

She closed her eyes and sucked in another breath. Silence filled the room.

“Was I drunk?”

“Oh… no. It’s more complicated than that.”

“That’s pretty fucking cryptic, Max.”

“Okay, well what I’m about to tell you will be unbelievable. I can’t believe I’m telling you anyway, but I can’t just… I don’t have anyone else to tell.”

Victoria’s expression changed from confused to concerned and back again, before settling somewhere in between.

“Okay…”

“In the bathroom, when Nathan shot Chloe. I stopped it from happening.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, no, I didn’t. But I also did.”

Faster than Max could react, Victoria was on her feet and grabbing onto her shoulders.

“Max Caulfield, I swear if you came into my goddamn room while you were high on fucking painkillers, I will…”

Max’s expression must have been one of sheer terror, because Victoria immediately stopped and stepped back.

“Jesus, Victoria! I’m not high!”

“I spilled my fucking guts to you, Caulfield. You better fucking not be.”

“Let me just finish, okay? I know I sound crazy. But please, just listen to me like I did for you.”

Victoria bit her lip, hugging her arms around herself, and gave a brief nod before sitting back down.

Max closed her eyes again and willed her heart to stop beating out of her chest.

“It sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone, I know. But I stopped Nathan from shooting her. I mean, the first time I didn’t.”

“First time.”

“First time. I jumped out when he pulled the trigger and then… Whoosh. Everything played backwards like a movie on VHS. It was all sights and sounds and colors, and then I was back in class again, before all of it had happened.”

Victoria still looked incredibly skeptical, but held her tongue.

“The second time, I pulled the fire alarm. Nathan dropped the gun, and Chloe lived. I saved her life, and went into this… alternate reality.”

“Okay, I’m going to stop you right there, Maxine. You’ve got problems. We all do. But I’m not a therapist. I don’t want to hear your dream journal.”

“I can prove it.”

Victoria frowned at her.

“Good luck.”

Max held up a finger.

“Give me a sec.”

She stepped out into the hallway and dashed across to her own room, where she dropped to the floor and slid an arm under the bed toward a box she had hidden there a few days before.

Returning with her photographs, she knocked at Victoria’s door, and was surprised to see it swing open.

“I half expected you to lock the door.”

“So did I.”

The two girls sat down on Victoria’s bed, and Max pulled the lid off the box and dumped a pile of polaroids out. Victoria selected one at random and held it up to the light.

“Your weirdo friend Warren,”

“Not all of them are interesting,”

Victoria grunted and dropped it, pulling another from the pile. Max watched as her expression shifted again, this time towards a mixture of confusion and anger. She flipped the photo around to show a glow-in-the-dark figurine that matched exactly the one on her desk not three feet away.

“Did you break into my fucking room?”

“Not in this timeline.”

“Bullshit. I just got that a few days ago. When were you in here? How did you get in?”

Max sighed.

“You snuck out of Blackwell one night, after Kate attempted suicide…”

“Kate what!?”

“Do you remember the video of her at the Vortex Club party?”

“Yeah, I took that down when the whole Nathan thing happened. I didn’t even mean to post it…”

“You were drunk, yeah, you told me.”

“I didn’t…”

“In this alternate universe, you didn’t take down the video, and it got around. Kate ended up on the roof and I had to talk her down.”

Victoria got very quiet.

“You snuck out that night to get drunk, and I needed information on Nathan, so I went into your room. That’s how I got the picture.”

“This is a really fucked up dream journal, Max.”

“I really wish that’s all it was.”

Victoria picked up a few more photos and held up another one. This one showed Chloe, pointing David Madsen’s revolver in the air.

“That’s Chloe, then?”

“We went to the junkyard to test out my rewinding power. She shot some bottles. It was stupid.”

Victoria stared at the picture again, sizing it up before picking up another.

“What the hell is this?”

“Oh, that. That’s a dead whale.”

“In the middle of Arcadia Bay, on fire?”

“My powers had a cost. But I didn’t realize it until then. Messing with time caused a huge storm to hit the town. That’s why I’m here, and not there.”

“Here and not there… what do you mean here and not there?”

“I had to go all the way back. I had to let Nathan kill Chloe. If I didn’t, all of Arcadia Bay would have been wiped out.”

“All of this because you hit a fire alarm?”

“I mean, I guess. I don’t know. But there was so much I saw and did… and none of it actually happened anymore. I saw Kate die. I saw Chloe die. I saw Jefferson die. I saw you…”

Max covered her mouth with her hand, leaning back away from Victoria, who gave her a wide-eyed stare.

“You fucking what?”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned that. I’m sorry. I’m going to just pretend I never said that and rewind now.”

“Wait, hold on, slow down, what the fuck, Max. You saw me die?”

Max nodded, looking sick to her stomach.

“What… how? Who?”

“Jefferson. It was actually my fault. I warned you…”

“Mr. Jefferson killed me?”

“I went to the End of the World party and warned you about Nathan, but I was wrong and it wasn’t Nathan. It was Jefferson. You went to him for protection and he drugged you.”

Victoria pushed herself against the wall and pulled her pillow close to her chest, looking shocked.

“I got taken too, and we were in that room he had under the Prescotts’ barn. I can’t…”

Max felt herself tearing up, and sniffled, realizing these were probably the first tears she had shed since Chloe’s funeral. Another Victoria’s voice echoed in her mind.

“You told me you were scared, and you were sorry. I tried to save you, but I couldn’t. The next time I woke up, you were gone. I’m… I’m sorry.”

Max slumped against the wall and rubbed at her eyes, trying to dry them. And then she jumped, because an arm suddenly wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her in. She hugged back, clinging to Victoria as she heard her last words, echoing over and over.

“Max… I believe you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well well well... what has happened to our intrepid duo? Find out next time on Life Is Strange!
> 
> NOTE as of May 15th I am in the process of moving into a new place. The next chapter may be a bit slow to write because of the mountain of boxes in every room. But I'm going to promise this fic will be finished. 
> 
> Seriously though, I've been playing around with this for a while, and I finally figured out a way to make it make sense within the story. I think. This scene wasn't hard to write, but it was hard for me in other ways. I have a lot in common with Victoria and a lot of what she feels is what I've felt in the past and present. So this is kind of emotional for me. Writing Max and Victoria's growing relationship is something I'm really committed to doing right, because I feel like they both need each other way more than they know, if they're going to get through what's ahead.
> 
> On that somewhat prophetic note:
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> 11/05/16 v1: initial post  
> 11/05/16 v2: removed second copy of entire text. oops


	6. There Will Come A Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay. Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell. Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase. But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own. Or is she?
> 
> THE GRAND RE-OPENING

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really, painfully short. I'm sorry. It's been a long time since I last updated (May or so?) and I wanted to just get it out there. As such it has not been edited by anyone besides myself, which will hopefully change tomorrow. Anyway, thanks for reading!

_Life is strange..._ Victoria thought, hugging the sobbing girl closer to her chest. A few months ago she would have never imagined Max being in her bed, or at least under these circumstances.

She blushed at the thought and was thankful that Max was thoroughly occupied crying all over her blouse.

But did she believe her? That was the big question, now wasn’t it? It would certainly explain a few of the weird things going on around Blackwell, and how Max had seemed to disappear and reappear those few days ago. And of course, the pictures.

But this was crazy. It had to be. Nobody just had _time powers_. Least of all the cute dorky girl she couldn’t stop thinking about…

Max interrupted this train of thought by coughing loudly into her chest, saving Victoria the embarrassment of dealing with yet more untoward thoughts.

“Th… thanks,” Max stuttered, clutching at her sleeve and looking up at her with watery eyes.

“I… shit, don’t mention it.”

Max pulled away reluctantly and leaned back against the wall, leaving the two in silence again.

“So did you mean it?” she said, after a time.

Victoria looked up from her lap to see Max fidgeting with a few of the photos.

“You said you believed me. Do you?”

“I… I guess? It’s pretty crazy stuff, Max. Like those photos could be photoshopped, or…”

She stopped, picking up another photo.

“What is this?”

Max leaned over to see.

“Oh, uh, my clothes were wet, so I had to borrow some Rachel Amber left at Chloe’s house.”

Victoria flinched at the name.

“She left clothing at Chloe’s house?”

“Yeah, her and Chloe were close.”

“Define close.”

Max looked at her quizzically, as though weighing her options, and for a moment Victoria panicked, fearing Max had figured out why she asked.

“I think her and Chloe were… together. Or at least Chloe saw it that way. I never knew Rachel.”

_Shit. Shit shit shit._

Max’s expression shifted back into questioning, and Victoria quickly realized she had made a face.

“You don’t like Rachel, do you. Or didn’t…”

“No, that’s not it, I…”

_Warm, soft hands slid up her thighs, moving steadily towards the hem of her skirt. A giggle. Golden blonde hair and a blue feather. It felt so good, and yet…_

“Victoria?”

She shook her head to clear the memories. She was not going to deal with this now.

“I’m fine,” she spat, sounding anything but.

Max frowned, but didn’t say anything, and they sank back into an uneasy silence.

“I think I should go…” Max piped up, after a few minutes.

“I… can you prove it?”

“Huh?”

“Prove you have these powers.”

“Okay, how?”

“Tell me what’s in my bag.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for why it was delayed so much, I moved into a new place, had a bunch of job-related stuff come up, and completely lost track of LiS for like two months. Let it be known that it is due to a few comments on previous chapters that I remembered and got back writing. Leave comments on stuff you like! Authors live for it!
> 
> Anyway, have a good one and thanks for reading, I'll be continuing this as my schedule allows.
> 
> EDIT: 11/13/2016
> 
> Clipped off the end and stuck it on the next chapter. Makes more sense this way. Sorry it's so short but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	7. You'll See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay. Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell. Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase. But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own. Or is she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. There have been some incredibly nice comments and I just want to say that they mean the world to me. I totally don't screech like a pterodactyl and run around my house when I get one. Totally. 
> 
> Thank you to anyone who has commented or given kudos or even just bothered to read. I love you all and appreciate you even more.

Max opened her eyes groggily, and raised a hand to rub the sleep out of them.  But as her vision cleared, the ceiling above her was very clearly not her own.  As she slowly regained awareness of her surroundings, it became clear that there was something pressing against her side.  Something warm.  

_ Oh no… _

She looked down to see a slightly disheveled mop of blonde hair resting against her chest, hair that smelled like expensive shampoo.  She froze.  Victoria’s arm rested across her body as she slept, and the events of the previous night all rushed back at once, from the tears to the realization dawning in Victoria’s eyes when she finally understood.  Max felt sick, partially from the confusion and alarm in her head, and partially from the half-empty bottle of vodka standing on the desk.  

“Mmmhhh”

Somewhere below her, Victoria stirred, her fingers grasping at Max’s shirt as she pulled closer.  And odd warmth bubbled to life in her chest as she idly thought about how nice it was to wake up next to someone.  

But then, she felt Victoria stiffen.  She looked up from the pillow she was making of Max’s chest and twisted around to make eye contact.  Her dark eyes went wide, almost as though she had seen a ghost.

“M… Max?”

“Good morning,” Max replied lamely.

 

* * *

 

Victoria scrubbed at her arms almost viciously, as though trying to tear her own skin off.  She closed her eyes, trying to focus on the rough sponge’s rubbing, but every time she did, she was confronted by Max’s stupid face and how absolutely perfect... _ ly awful  _ it was waking up to see it so close…

She yelped as she dropped the sponge, which rolled under the curtain and out into the rest of the bathroom.  

_ This is stupid.  She’s just a stupid hipster with some sort of time-bending power that totally didn’t sleep in my bed last night.   _

“And I totally didn’t like it,” she muttered, shutting off the water and wrapping a towel around herself.  She swept the curtains to the side and stepped out, bumping into someone standing outside.

“Here’s your sponge, Vic.”

Courtney.  Of course.  She snatched the sponge away.

“I uh… I noticed something this morning.”

“And what did you notice?” Victoria grumbled, not eager to have a conversation in the bathroom.

“I noticed Max Caulfield sneaking out of your room.”

Victoria’s heart dropped out of her chest, through her hips and down through the floor below.  

“I… didn’t…. She…”

“Hey, it’s okay.  I’m just glad you’re finally getting some.  You could use an outlet for all that frustration”

Victoria was in shock.  She almost wanted to scream.  But she could only stand there, halfway between furious and terrified as she heard the door swing open and shut.  

“Oh no.”

 

* * *

 

Max, meanwhile, had problems of her own.  When she had sprinted across the hall to her own room and slammed the door, after falling onto the bed she found she couldn’t move.  She could only lie there, heart pounding as she realized just exactly what had happened.  Her heart seemed to flutter in her chest every time she so much as tried to think about laying next to Victoria, and that seemed so… wrong?  

It wasn’t that Victoria was a  _ girl  _ that bothered her.  If her time with Chloe meant anything at all, it was that she had definitely had something there.  It was barely even a dare when she had kissed her, anyway.  

But this was Victoria fucking Chase.  Queen Bitch of Blackwell.  Or at least she used to be.  Max could still remember the night of the party, with the very same girl nearly shouting over the music.  In another life, they could have been friends.  

This was apparently that other life.  

 

_ Tap tap tap _

 

Max’s train of thought was interrupted by an urgent knocking at her door, so she swung off the bed to answer.  And was promptly bowled over by an agitated-looking Victoria.  

“Courtney saw you!  Fuck, this is bad, this is really bad.”

“What do you mean, she saw me?”

“She thinks we… can you rewind?”

“Can I what?”

“Go back to this morning.  Stay in my room or something.  They can’t know I was in there with…”

“Victoria!”

Max held out her hand, trying to stop the other girl’s wild pacing, back and forth across the tiny dormitory.  

“If they find out, they’ll take me off… I’ll be a disappointment again…”

Victoria pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath.  

“I can’t have anyone thinking I’m… into that sort of stuff.”

Max frowned.  

“What sort of stuff?”

Victoria glanced up at the ceiling, clearly uncomfortable.  

“Courtney thinks we… did it.”

“Did wha… oh!”

Max blushed a deep crimson and Victoria buried her face in her hands.  

“I can’t have people thinking that I’m… doing that with you.”

“No, uh, of course not.”

Max felt an odd sinking feeling, but didn’t really want to face its meaning.  

“My parents would… let’s just say they don’t approve of that… sort of thing.”

“I can’t just rewind though.  It’s been like an hour.  The most I’ve ever done is fifteen minutes and that almost killed me.”

“Didn’t you skip back a whole week?”

“But that was through the picture and unless you have a picture from last night…”

Victoria frowned again and began to pace.  

“I can just tell people we were studying?”

“That’s the same excuse everybody uses.  Not going to work.”

“But we didn’t…”

“I KNOW.”

 

_ Knock Knock _

 

Any further discussion was cut short by a knock at the door.  Victoria looked aghast and stepped back into the corner of the room, then motioned toward the door with her head.  Max shrugged and went to open it.  

“Oh, hi Courtney.”

“Hey, Max.  And hey Vic, I heard most of that.”

She stepped in and folded her arms, a grin on her face.  Victoria slunk into view from near the closet, looking forlorn.  

“Don’t worry about it, jeez Vic.  I thought you knew me better.”

“But…”

“My sister’s a lesbian, I don’t give a shit,” she turned to Max “so are you two fucking?”

Max turned scarlet and shook her head, staring down at her feet.  

“Well maybe you should be.  You’ve both been fucking crazy since that shit with Nathan.  And no, I’m not going to spread it around, Vic.  You’ve told me enough about your parents.”

“Uh… thank you, Courtney.”

“Any time.”

And with that, she spun in place and walked out, closing the door behind her.  Max and Victoria just stared, first at the door, then at each other.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Notices your end of chapter*
> 
> OwO what's happening next?
> 
> We will see. I gotta get the story up and going, now that we've (sort of) resolved a bit of the tension between Max and Victoria. But how could Victoria's parents be so awful? And why did Max get her powers back? And what's the deal with that bit that implied Victoria and Rachel did a thing?
> 
> Stay tuned, dear reader. Stay tuned.


	8. No More Tears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay. Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell. Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase. But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own. Or is she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of Wednesday, November 23 I have gotten it read and edited, so we can consider this a final chapter now! Yay.
> 
> Word of thank you to Recourse, of Damaged Goods and Book and Candle fame, for talking to me about writer-y shit (and being seriously awesome, seriously go check her out), as well as Araneavalon, a friend of mine who helped me with some plot bits.

“Um, well…”

Max hugged her arms tight around herself and let out a strained laugh, though it sounded more like a cough.  

“Yeah…”

Victoria turned on her heel and put some distance between them, before realizing she was heading _further_ into Max’s room and stopped abruptly, her movements awkwardly robotic.

“I… we…”

“I’m straight,” Victoria said, suddenly.  

“What?”

“I like guys.”

Max frowned at her, confused.  

“Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, after all.  I have gay friends!  Isn’t Stella gay?”

Victoria stammered as she backed away, face nearly purple with embarrassment, and suddenly her legs collided with the sofa; she was as far back as she could get.  

“Relax, Victoria.  It was just a… sleepover, I guess.  It happens all the time.”

Max didn’t look like she believed what she said, her face turning redder and redder.   

“Yeah.  I guess we’re… friends or something.  I don’t know.”

Victoria chose this as the end of their conversation and burst into the hallway, nearly tripping over a pile of worn t-shirts as she went.  Max was again left speechless, staring as the door swung closed.  

It was a Saturday, so school was not in session, and for that Max thanked whatever deity was watching over her.  The events a few days ago were probably common knowledge and she had had enough attention back when Chloe...

Either way, Max checked her school email, as per her routine, and found a single message, from the Principal.  

 

>Assembly in the gymnasium, 2:00 PM.  Mandatory for all students.

 

There went her day of solitude.  Max grimaced to herself.  She supposed she would be sitting near Victoria now, if they were friends or something.  Maybe she’d walk down there with her.  

She glanced at the corner of the screen to see the time.  

 

**1:30**

 

“Shit.”

 

* * *

 

 

  
Victoria sat alone in her room, feeling completely awful.  Why had she rambled like that?  Max probably thought she was crazy.  But then, what Max had told her had been crazy too, so maybe Max was the crazy one?  Her head hurt.

And of course, there was no escape from awkwardness, because there was a mandatory assembly and Max would probably want to avoid her there, which was probably a good thing, but still…

She pulled on a pair of designer boots, picked a few pills out of her weekly organizer, and headed out, door swinging open in perfect sync with the one across the hall.  

“Hey, so are we going to this assembly thing?”

Victoria went pale, staring awkwardly for a second before she nodded, weakly.  Max grinned (did she really?  I’d have thought she would avoid me) and the two set off for the gymnasium.  

 

* * *

  


Kate Marsh had experienced a few miracles in her short time on this Earth.  Once, her previous rabbit, a fuzzy lop named David, had run out into the street near her house.  That he made it through the traffic convinced her three-year-old self that God was watching over her, and certainly over David.  A few months ago, she had been on the verge of suicide, but seeing Max Caulfield go through all that and out the other side had given her the strength to carry on.  But now, seeing her friend walk into the assembly side by side with Victoria Chase, queen b-word of Blackwell?  

She made the sign of the cross unconsciously and reminded herself that God was watching over her, and He must certainly have plans for Max as well.  But the seat she had saved for her friend went unfilled, as Max followed Victoria over to the other side of the bleachers, waving at Kate as she went.  Kate waved nervously back and prayed that whatever came out of this, it was good.  

Max, meanwhile, sat down next to her newfound friend, sliding her hands under her thighs and rocking a little, anxious for seemingly no reason.  

“So what’s the assembly about?”

Victoria just made a face and returned her attention to her phone.  

But Max didn’t need to wonder, because Principal Wells was already striding onto the stage erected in the center of the room.  

“Quiet down, quiet down,” he spoke into the microphone, though there wasn’t much quieting to do.  Blackwell had lost a bit of the life it had had a few months prior.  In more ways than one.  

“As you all may know, the Prescott family has been an invaluable supporter to our school for many years,”

Victoria looked up from her phone, unease stretching across her features.  Max felt the bottom fall out of her stomach.  

_Oh no_

“...and despite the… unfortunate incident involving a certain member of his family, Sean Prescott has pledged his continued support for Blackwell.  He has even been kind enough to fund a special retreat for all of us, so that we can continue to learn and grow, as is our tradition.  Now, a round of applause for Mr. Prescott!”

The man that stepped onto the stage had sharp eyes, like a hawk, and facial features that did nothing to hide the resemblance.  He peered across the assembled students, appearing to Max as though surveying prey, and for a second, her eyes locked with his and she felt like ice.  The terrible cold did not recede when he looked away, and she shivered involuntarily.  

“I hate that man.”

Max looked up to see Victoria staring at him, an uncharacteristic anger in her eyes.  

“You know Mr. Prescott?”

Victoria looked down at her, expression softening but not changing.

“I do.  You do remember me and Nate… we were friends for a long time.  I’ve known Sean Prescott for most of my life.  And I’ve hated him almost as long.”

 

* * *

 

  


As the assembly finished, Victoria spoke into Max's ear.

"We need to talk."

Max nodded vigorously, and as they filed down the bleachers, she plotted her escape route.  But with her longer legs, Victoria was faster.  

Max followed her out, the taller girl easy to spot in the throng of students and staff.  The rush of students made it hard to keep up, but Victoria's blonde hair stuck out above the mass.  At least until she disappeared through the exit doors.  

Max swore and hurried, pushing through the crowd as best she could.  But when she finally made it out into open air, Victoria was nowhere to be seen.  

 

_Shit._

 

But then she heard it.  The voice of the awful man that had so recently sent a chill down her spine.  She turned to see him, standing tall and imposing, in front of Victoria, who was pressed up against the wall.  Probably to be as far as possible from him.  Max hurried over.

“Vic Chase, how nice to see you here.”

“Hello, Mr. Prescott.”

“Oh come now, we’re old buds now.  You know you can call me Sean.”

“Of course.”

“And how is your dad?  The, uh, transition to home life treating him well?”

Victoria grimaced, telling Mr. Prescott about her father as Max stood nearby, not knowing what to do.  

“And who’s this?  One of your girlfriends?”

Max looked up to see Mr. Prescott staring directly at her, his eyes probing her, not like a camera, more like an X-ray.  She swallowed.

“This is Max.  My _friend_.”

Prescott stuck a hand towards Max, who flinched, then acquiesced to a limp handshake.  

“Charmed, I’m sure.  I bet she will  _ love  _ to meet your parents,” He glanced at his watch.  “But anyways, I’ll be off.  Have to visit Nathan, he doesn’t get many visitors, after all.”

“What an ass.”

Victoria rubbed her arm, frowning.  

“You don’t know the half of it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we bring Sean Prescott into the mix. He looks evil, sounds evil, and seems to have made Max and Victoria VERY uncomfortable. Probably for good reason. 
> 
> Let it be known though, when Victoria says she's straight, she's probably lying. I mean, check the ship tags on this! So don't give up hope or anything. 
> 
> But anyway, the actual second act is underway, so we're gonna get weird, spooky, and probably more than a little supernatural in the coming chapters.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	9. Break Your Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the game, Max Caulfield is dealing with the ramifications of what it truly meant to save Arcadia Bay. Haunted by dreams of her journeys through time, she struggles to return to what passes for normal at Blackwell. Huge things have gone down and thrown everyone off, including Blackwell's resident queen, Victoria Chase. But messing with the flow of time has consequences that not even Max herself could have predicted, and without her best friend she's on her own. Or is she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap.
> 
> The last time I updated was in November, shortly before I got a real life job. To say things have been crazy is a massive understatement. Adulting is difficult, and sometimes it takes you away from things you love. 
> 
> But I'm back, and I'm committed to finishing this fic, and not just to get it done quick. I've got standards I need to live up to. 
> 
> In the meantime thank you so much to anyone who's commented or reviewed, I really love every one of you and hope that I can finish this in a way that satisfies you!

And so it was that Max found herself, for the second time that day, in Victoria’s room.  She perched on the edge of the couch, watching anxiously as her friend paced back and forth.  She was about to say something, anything, to break the silence when Victoria stopped in place and turned to face her.  

 

“So this retreat… thing.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Victoria pinched the bridge of her nose and resumed her pacing.  Max pushed backwards so she could swing her legs back and forth, and that seemed to ease her anxiety, at least a little.

 

“What’s his  _ fucking  _ play?”  Victoria spat suddenly.

 

Max jumped a little, the outburst putting her off-balance

 

“W… what?”

 

“Sean Prescott doesn’t do anything without a fucking reason.”  She looked over to Max’s expression, one of complete bafflement, and her scowl softened.  

 

“Okay, so you don’t know him.  But I do.  He’s a fucking snake.  You want to know why Nate…”

 

Victoria’s voice caught suddenly, and she spun away from Max, facing towards the wall.  Max watched her shoulders rise and fall as she collected herself.  

 

“...why Nate was so fucked up?  It’s all his fucking father,” she finished, voice low and dark.

 

Max felt helpless.  She wanted to get up and… something.  But instead she just sat uselessly.  

 

But, wait, she had the rewind.  Just go up and hug her or something!  You can always undo it!  Or so her brain told her.  Making up her mind, she pushed off the bed, getting to her feet and slowly, cautiously, extended a hand, until her fingertips brushed the surface of Victoria’s sweater.  

 

A flinch, but she didn’t move away, so Max let her hand drop onto Victoria’s shoulder, because at least it was something.  

 

“I’m… sorry.  It’s all just… it’s fucked.”

 

Victoria nodded, and turned back towards her, eyes slightly red.  

 

“It wasn’t even his fault, you know.  It was Jefferson.  That’s what he told me.”

 

Max flinched at the name.  Jefferson.  She’d been doing very well at  _ not  _ thinking about him.  Very, very well…

 

Out of the corner of her vision, she caught a flutter.  Something moving at the edge of her sight.  She turned in place to see Victoria’s desk shudder forwards and back, like it wasn’t focused right.  It rippled, distorted, and then…

 

BANG

 

It stopped, looking mostly the same.  Except the computer screen was on, and displayed across it was a headline.

 

**High School Student Missing**

 

And under it, a picture of Max.  

 

Her vision went gray, fading in and out much like the desk had before, and she lost her balance, suddenly feeling very tired.  The last thing she heard was Victoria’s panicked shout before everything went black.  

  
  


The hard floor seems to press against her. The chill of tile, or plastic, or something, sucks the heat right out of her body.  But none of this compares to the slurry of thoughts jumbled inside her overstuffed head.  It hurts just to breathe, let alone think.  But something tells her that she has to, so she concentrates.  Opens one eye, just barely.  

 

_ Click _

 

_ Click _

 

_ Click _

 

Hovering somewhere above, a dark, menacing shape makes sounds, both mechanical and organic, but still indistinct.  A pair of bright lights frame the whole experience like some sort of stage.  

 

Max moans, it’s all she can do besides roll back and forth, and it seems to bring the attention of the dark figure.  It leans down, and now she can see it’s a man, and he grabs her leg and moves it before beginning to click away again.  

 

She moans again, this time louder.  

 

“...STAY!  STILL!”

 

Her blood runs cold.  Her mind seems to have finally shifted into gear and a sudden surge of recognition sweeps through.  The man?  Jefferson, her photography teacher.  And Chloe’s murderer.  Bile rises in her gut.  He leans down, brandishing a camera in her face.  

 

_ Click _

 

_ Click _

 

_ Click _

 

The photos of Rachel Amber.  The binders with names on them.  It all whirls in her mind until she reaches the only logical, horrible conclusion.  

 

_ She going to die. _

 

She whimpers.

 

“Max!  You fucked up my shot!”

 

Jefferson growls like an animal, a predatory warning.  

 

The lights flash and flicker as more clicks ring out.  She lets the darkness close over her.  

  
  


Max shot back into consciousness with a jolt, her arms flailing and a sob rising from her throat.

 

“No!  NO!”  

 

She scrambled away from Victoria, pressing up against the wall like a deer cornered by wolves.  A few moments of tense silence passed, but as reality sunk in, Max began to calm down.

 

Considering the circumstances, Victoria was doing fairly well.  The inexplicable bang, Max dropping to the floor, her own panic threatening to overcome her;  But instead, she had somehow gotten Max onto the bed for a tense thirty seconds.  But as Max looked her up and down, terrified, it became clear that this wasn’t a typical fainting spell (as if those were normal).

 

_ Shit. _

 

Victoria tried to remember what she had read all those years ago doing research to help Nate. Slow even breaths, bilateral stimulation, counting exercises… she couldn’t really parse the jumble of half-rememberings.  Instead she just sat where she was and waited for Max to make the first move.  

 

It was a few minutes before Max’s breathing returned to normal.  She slid back against the wall and stared off into space, eyes cloudy.  

 

“Are you…”

 

Max took a deep breath and focused both eyes on her.  

 

“No.”

 

Victoria looked down at her lap, then back up.

 

“Can I help?”

 

Max looked away again, out the window.  

  
“No.”

 

 

 


	10. Your Fears

The clouds hung oppressively over Blackwell as the campus lay quiet.  The air had developed a bite to it as the winter months began to set in, and Victoria was sure it wouldn’t be long before a layer of snow rested on the ground.  But, for the moment, she pulled the stack of books closer to her chest and hurried along, ignoring the dreary weather. 

 

It wasn’t fair, she thought.  She had no reason to believe any of what Caulfield had shown her.  Except she did, actually. It was strange the way even evidence directly in front of her seemed like not enough.  But here she was. Instead of packing for the looming “retreat”, as Sean Prescott had called it, she was scouring the library for books about Arcadia Bay.  Stuff that went back further than she cared to know. But Max was insistent, and Victoria couldn’t say no to…

 

She grimaced and shook her head almost angrily, banishing those thoughts.  Max was a friend. She was helping a friend. 

 

As she pushed open the door to the dormitory hallway, she found the bustle of students packing to be almost calming.  It seemed normal after the events of the past few months. 

Sort of. 

She knocked on Max’s door, ignoring the looks she was probably getting.  

 

“Who is it?”

 

Max sounded wary, defensive.  

 

“It’s me”

 

A moment of silence, and then a soft footstep and the door clicked open to reveal Max’s face, eyes bloodshot and puffy.  She’d been crying again. Victoria felt a strange pang in her chest. She pushed into the room, dropped the books on the bed, and pulled Max into a hug, almost reflexively.  She felt Max tense up, then relax into her chest. 

 

“Thanks,” Max mumbled.

 

Victoria said nothing and just hugged her.  After a while, Max spoke again.

 

“I found something.”

 

She pulled out of the embrace and stepped back over to her computer, where a dizzying number of tabs lined the top of her web browser.  

 

“I found this old website from like, 1995, that talked about the Tobanga.”

 

“That totem pole out there?” Victoria motioned towards the window.

 

“Yeah.  It says right here,”

 

She scooted over in her chair and Victoria squeezed in next to her.  

 

“The Tobanga, as it is known, appeared in Arcadia Bay during the Twister of ‘42.” Max read.

 

“Twister of ‘42?  As in 1942?”

 

Max clicked to another tab, this one labeled “Lookout Air Raids”.  

 

“The only thing I can find about 1942 was Japanese bombings, but that was way south of here.  Nothing about a twister.”

 

Victoria tapped back to the previous tab and kept reading.  The article was fairly interesting, until it descended into some conspiracy theory about native american burial grounds and vengeful spirits.  However, the concluding line caught her eye. 

 

_ It was only thanks to William Prescott that the town was rebuilt, but it seems there is little evidence it was destroyed in the first place.  Curious indeed. _

 

“That bit at the end.  Prescott.”

 

Max nodded.  

 

“It can’t be a coincidence.  He has to be involved with…”

 

She was interrupted by a knock from behind them, and both girls turned around to see Dana standing in the open door.

 

“Sorry,” she said with a grin, “Am I interrupting something?”

 

It suddenly dawned on Max that she was sitting nearly on top of Victoria, and she jumped out of the chair with a yelp.

 

Dana giggled and made a dismissive gesture.  

 

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.  I’m just here because it looks like you two haven’t packed at all for this retreat thing.”

 

Victoria grimaced at her.  

 

“I had no plans to attend, Dana.”

 

“That’s funny, because Principal Wells said it was mandatory.  Even for you.”

 

Max spoke up

 

“Mandatory?”

 

“Check your email, girl.  Though I can see you’ve been a little… distracted.”

 

Victoria shot her a withering glare as Max leaned over her computer to see.  

 

_ All students are expected to attend, as we will be using this time to clean the dormitories.   _

 

“Told you.  Now get packing!” 

 

And with that, Dana left, closing the door behind her.  

 

“Do you think that maybe…” Max began

“Sean Prescott is going to do something here.  He doesn’t do anything out of charity. He’s getting something out of this.”

 

Max looked back at the computer.  

 

“I’m not going.”

 

“Neither am I.”

 

* * *

  
  


Max’s heart beat in her chest so hard, she was sure Victoria could hear it.  Maybe it was the thrill of breaking the rules, maybe it was the way Victoria was sitting next to her in the driver’s seat of the car.  Maybe it was the fact that they had absolutely no idea what was going on. But still there it was.  _ Thumpthump Thumpthump  _ in her ears.  

 

“I think the buses are leaving.”

 

Sure enough, just ahead of them, the buses were pulling away from Blackwell, full of students.

 

“Yeah, Taylor said they just left.”  Victoria muttered, tapping on her phone. 

 

“Oh...okay.  Let’s uh… get moving.”

 

Max cursed herself for not hiding the stammer in her voice.  But there was nothing to be done about it at this point, anyway.  

 

She propped herself up against the leather seat and glanced back out the windshield, where the trail of yellow buses disappeared into the fog.  

 

“Hey,” Victoria said softly from behind her, a hand coming to rest on her shoulder.  Max felt the trembles get stronger.

 

“We need to figure out what’s going on with… oh shit.”

 

A bright light appeared from around the bend where the buses had disappeared, and she yanked Max back.  The rumble of a high-end sports SUV was unmistakable. This had to be Prescott. 

 

“Fuck, it’s him,” Max whispered, stating the obvious.

 

The rumble grew closer and closer until Max was certain Sean Prescott was going to drive his SUV straight over the top of Victoria’s car.  But then it swerved into the parking lot, a brief moment of eerie silence choking the air. She grabbed at the closest thing to her hand and squeezed, finding Victoria’s hand.  Victoria’s breath audibly caught.

 

The two waited a beat, then quietly exited the car, Max letting go of Victoria’s hand reluctantly.

 

But then, from up ahead in the parking lot:

 

“I can’t believe you brought me back to this fucking place,”

 

Victoria gasped audibly.  It was Nathan.

 

“You know exactly why I did, boy.  Need I repeat myself?” Sean Prescott’s voice was venomous.  The threat not even veiled. 

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Good.”

 

The voices passed away from them, becoming impossible to hear, and Victoria held out her hand again.  The fog seemed to grow thicker and thicker, though the creepy atmosphere was unnecessary justification.  Victoria’s hand was cold, but she squeezed tight. The pair hurried closer and caught up to the Prescotts and their conversation. 

 

“Fucking Chase.  I’m glad Victor left town.  He was weak. And that child of his?  You should never have spent so much time there.  It made you weak too.”

 

Nathan didn’t respond, but Sean continued on as they walked.

 

“I should have never let you near them.  That family is a fucking disgrace to Arcadia Bay.  It’s only justice that they moved out, and soon, they will never want to come back.”

 

As the voices faded away, Max felt Victoria shaking behind her.  She squeezed her hand tighter, then turned to face her. Victoria was crying.

 

“Whoa whoa, you’re okay.  You are okay.” 

 

Max grabbed her hand again and squeezed, then pulled her into a hug.  Victoria tensed, but hugged back.

 

“I  _ fucking hate  _ Sean Prescott.  I  _ fucking hate  _ him.”

 

“It’s okay Tori… uh Victoria”

 

Victoria suddenly froze.  

 

“What did you call me?”

 

“Sorry, I meant Victoria.  I didn’t mean…”

 

“No, it’s…” She let out a puff of air.  “It’s okay.”

 

The two stood for a moment as Victoria composed herself.

 

“Let’s go.  I think he’s gone.  We need to… we have to follow him.”

 

They both disentangled themselves from each other, an odd feeling pressing at the back of Max’s mind.  Were the circumstances different, she would have quite liked this but…

 

“Are you sure?  You don’t seem sure,” she interrupted that train of thought.  

 

Victoria was busy staring at her feet, eyes unfocused.  

 

“Hey, T… Victoria, are you…”

 

Victoria looked up at her and locked eyes, her gaze steady.  

 

“I’m okay, Max.  Let’s go.”

 

Max nodded, then began to wander into the fog, taking care to do it quietly, just in case the Prescotts had lingered.  But, luckily, she heard Sean’s voice off in the distance, yelling. Likely at Nathan, it seemed. She cringed.

 

“I fucking hate that man,” Victoria muttered as the two began to walk towards the school.  

 

“I know how you feel.”

 

“I’ve known him for ten years.  He’s a psychopath.”

 

Max looked up, where clouds were beginning to gather ominously, even visible through the fog.

 

“Victoria, was it supposed to rain today?”

 

“No, it… shit, was it?”

 

Max was reminded suddenly of whipping winds and the spray of rain.  

 

“We need to move, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy, okay, where to begin?
> 
> It's obviously been a while, but it's actually done. I will be uploading all of it over the coming days. A big thank you to my roommate for proofreading all of it up to a point, and a big thank you to anyone who has left any comments, because without you I wouldn't have actually done it. 
> 
> There may be a few more errors than usual as my editor has been rather busy in her personal life and cannot edit, but i figured it would be better to just get it all up rather than wait forever. 
> 
> Thanks again.


	11. Left There

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, uh, remember that Major Character Death tag? 
> 
> Yeah, it was there for a reason. Sorry.

Sean Prescott threw open the doors to the school, the wild look on his face clear, even reflected in the glass.  Nathan scurried along behind him, Caliban to his father’s Prospero. Or at least that was what the Shakespeare Max could remember told her.  Victoria rested an arm on her shoulder as the two girls hid behind one of the art installations on the lawn, and Max could feel a tremor run through her.  

 

“Can you see where… where he’s going?”

 

Max squinted through the fog but it was impossible to clearly see.  

 

“No, we have to wait a bit.  Let’s get closer, I can always just rewind if he sees us.”

 

“Right, yeah, I forgot.”

 

Max turned around and smiled in a way she thought might be reassuring, but probably just looked awkward.  Victoria grimaced back. 

 

The two ran across the last fifty feet, pressing themselves against the wall just outside the entrance.  Max peered in the windows and watched Nathan look around before disappearing inside the bathroom at the end of the hallway.  The very same one where…

 

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Victoria muttered.  

 

She stepped over to the door and gave the handle a yank, but the door stayed shut.  Locked. 

 

“Shit.”

 

The wind was starting to pick up, and the sky had grown noticeably grayer in the past few minutes.  Max even saw small droplets starting to hit the sidewalk. The storm was coming. 

 

“How did he get in?”  Victoria demanded, pulling on the other doors fruitlessly.  

 

“I don’t know.  Where can we find a key?”

 

“Maybe Samuel left one in the shed?”

 

Max looked up at the sky again worriedly, but nodded.  

 

“Stay here and look for another way in.  I’m going to go check it out.”

“Isn’t this how people get killed, splitting up?”

 

“Maybe, but we have to get in there.  Text me if you find a way in, I’ll text you if I find the keys.”

 

Victoria nodded grimly, wrapping her arms around herself, and Max set off at a jog for the dormitories.  

 

* * *

 

When she got around the corner to the dorm lawn, something was amiss.  Or rather, someone. 

 

Samuel stood out in the center of the lawn, looking up at the sky with several squirrels on the ground near him.  Freaky shit, Max thought, but then again, nothing had made sense for a long time. As she walked up, he made no effort to look at her but simply said:

 

“Hello, Max.”

 

“Hey Samuel.”

 

“There’s a big storm coming.  Bigger than the last one. I hope you’re ready.”

 

“What do you mean, what last one?”

 

Samuel looked down at her, his eyes sad.  

 

“When Chloe passed, a storm also passed through Blackwell, one way or another.”

 

“Do you… do you think this one will kill anyone?”

 

“I don’t know, Max.  Neither do the squirrels.  We just have to wait and see.”

 

Max looked around at the animals arrayed around the grass.  They looked back, unsettlingly. 

 

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  

 

“I need the keys to the school.  I need to get inside and… stop this.”

 

She hoped with everything going on he would understand what she meant.  

 

He looked sadly at her, and then pointed over to the maintenance shed.  

 

“I left them in there.  Samuel will help if that’s what’s needed.”

 

She nodded.  

 

“Thank you.”

 

He simply looked back up at the sky and said nothing.  

 

Max set off towards the shed, glancing over at the Tobanga, which seemed to be looking directly at her, as it always did.  She hoped it approved of what she was doing. 

 

The keys were laying inside on a toolbox, and she grabbed them before turning around and jogging back.  Hopefully there was still time before…

 

**KABOOM**

 

Lightning flashed across the sky and a peal of thunder ripped through the air so loud it may as well have been a board hitting her in the chest.  She nearly stumbled back into the shed, but forced herself outside. 

 

The grass was empty.  Samuel had vanished, as had the squirrels, and the sky had turned suddenly almost black.  Her phone vibrated in her bag and she pulled it out. 

 

>Max get your ass over here

 

>NOW

 

Max pushed against the mounting fear and ran for the school entrance.  As she came around the corner she nearly fell over. The entire front of the school looked like a bomb had gone off, with bits of wood and brick laying all over the lawn and the statue in the fountain leaning at an angle away from it.  Victoria was hiding behind one of the other art installations, and when she saw Max she ran over. 

 

“What the fuck happened?”

 

Victoria looked over at the hole in the front of the building.

 

“I was looking in one of the windows and there was a blue light.  It scared the hell out of me and I ran for cover, and then the whole place exploded and the sky got dark.”

 

“Fuck”

 

“We need to get in there, this fucking disaster movie shit is too much.”

 

Max stepped out in front of the school and looked inside.  Sure enough, in the back of the hallway there was a glowing light that was coming from the girls’ bathroom.  The scorch marks along the hallway did not paint a pretty picture. She took a hesitant step inside, and Victoria followed behind.  The air smelled of ozone and the hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up, but she pushed onwards, the fifty foot hallway feeling like fifty miles.  

 

Suddenly a piercing scream rang out that chilled Max to the bone.  It sounded almost like Nathan, but then was cut abruptly short. She began to run, hoping to help whoever was…

 

But as she rounded the corner she was confronted by Sean Prescott, holding a bloody knife, standing over the lifeless corpse of his son.  

“I knew you’d come, you worthless  _ cunt _ ,” he spat.  

 

* * *

  
Before Max could react to anything, there was a terrible whipping of wind that threatened to tear her from the ground.  The walls around her began to twist and bend, before it seemed like the entire school disintegrated around her as a vortex formed overhead.  A great rumbling broke across the ground, and a hole opened, black as night, swallowing up the tile of the floor into its maw. 

 

Victoria screamed, stepping back away as she began to comprehend what had occurred.  She backed against the remnants of lockers still attached to the far wall, her face a mask of sheer terror.  

 

“You think you can control anything, girl?  This is true power!”

 

Sean raised a hand into the air and the remains of the building began to rotate along with the surrounding vortex.  

 

Max held out a hand to stop all this, but felt a sharp pain as her hand twisted unnaturally towards the black hole in the floor.  As the winds grew stronger and bits of concrete and metal began to whip around, she saw what looked like a mist flow out of her arm and into the blackness.  Blackness that grew on the edges of her vision as well as she dropped to her knees, her strength failing her. 

 

“You may have stopped me before, bitch.  But now? You will die, frightened and alone, as I gain what was rightfully mine all along.”

 

With that, he reached towards a piece of concrete and rebar that was swirling slowly overhead, and seemed to pull it through the air, with an unmistakable trajectory.  Victoria was slowly getting to her feet, beginning to step towards them, and Max tried to call out when…

 

The world slowed to a crawl as the piece of rebar hit Victoria.  Max watched her eyes go wide, then the color drain out of her face as the metal penetrated her chest.  Max didn’t have to be a doctor to know what it had hit. A small trickle of blood began to seep from Victoria’s mouth as the light in her eyes abruptly went dark. Max’s head throbbed, threatening to split open as she was forced to watch Victoria die, just the same as Chloe.  

 

“NO!” she screamed at Prescott.  “NO!”

 

She tore her gaze away from the slowly falling girl and instead fixed it on the man in front of her, the center of the vortex.  The agony of holding back the wind disappeared in an instant, replaced with white hot rage. She took a step forward.

 

“You see that!  The one you love!  Weak! Just like you!”

 

But Max wasn’t listening.  She took another step forward, the swirling wind ripping at her like sandpaper.  Blood flowed freely from her nose, but she ignored it and kept advancing. 

 

“You think you can stop me?  Nobody can! There’s nothing you can do but beg for mercy that will never come!”

 

She was nearly in arms’ reach now, only a few more seconds…

 

Prescott laughed, an impossibly loud sound that echoed over the howling winds.  

 

“Rachel Amber, Chloe Price, Nathan Prescott, Vic Chase, and now Max Caulfield.  All names that will be erased from history! You will never…”

 

But Max let out an inhuman scream, using everything she had left in her body, and dove into his chest, knocking both of them into the darkness.  There was a horrible tearing noise, as though reality itself ripped in half, and then, silence. 

 

Victoria Chase’s corpse lay next to a swirl of dirt and debris, her unseeing eyes fixed on the spot where Max had been. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *low whistle*
> 
> Yeah. 
> 
> Unfortunately this is gonna be a cliffhanger. I'll post the next 3 chapters in a few days. Sorry.


	12. God Knows Where

Max looked up from her notebook to see Jefferson giving a lecture she was all too familiar with.  

 

“Alfred Hitchcock famously called film ‘little pieces of time’ but he could be talking about photography, as he likely was.”

 

She looked to her left to see Victoria, idly playing with her phone, then right, to watch a ball of paper bounce off Kate Marsh’s head.  But then the scene warped, rain coming in through a rapidly growing hole in the ceiling, which revealed the Arcadia Bay lighthouse standing above her.  A hand closed around her neck from behind and she jerked away, falling into a puddle at the foot of a tree. She spun to see Sean Prescott standing over her, murder in his eyes.  

 

She was no longer in the classroom, but instead in the rain, on the hill overlooking the town.  She raised a hand to slow time, but it seemed to move faster. Prescott simply laughed. 

 

“You think your powers have any effect anymore?  You’re fucking useless now, just like all the others!”

 

He took a step closer, but the scene shuddered, reality melting and shifting before them.  And just like that, he was gone, and Max was in Chloe’s car, driving away from the school as Nathan screamed at their dust.  She couldn’t look at her though. Chloe was dead. This wasn’t happening. 

 

“Max?  Hey, Max?  You there?”

 

She snapped her head up and she was in Chloe’s bed, with a blurry figure laying next to her.  The sweet smell of pot was sour in her nose, and a storm raged outside. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the blood running down her face.  Within her mind she felt at the strings of reality, and reached out, and pulled. 

 

She opened her eyes to find herself laying instead inside a train car.  The land whipped past outside and she grimaced as the throbbing in her head dulled.  

 

But then she saw what was on the other end of the car.  What looked like a younger Chloe and another girl… 

 

“Rachel?!”

 

But the two of them didn’t hear her, as they were sharing a pair of earbuds.  Chloe gazed out the doorway at the passing Oregon landscape. Rachel, however, gazed directly at Max.  

 

“I see you,” she mouthed, then giggled and turned her attention back to Chloe.  Max found herself at a loss, staring open mouthed, then...

 

**BANG**

 

Max was standing in front of the girls’ dormitories, and the paint can had fallen on Victoria again, but this time it hit her directly.  Victoria crumpled in a heap as her friends screamed. Max took a step backwards and tripped on the edge of the sidewalk, falling backwards and knocking the wind from her lungs.  She opened her eyes to see Sean Prescott standing over her, an evil look on his face. Rain began to fall and landed directly in her eye. She wiped at her face and as her vision cleared, she was surrounded by Blackwell students.  They all looked up and she followed their vision. Above was Kate, who jumped. 

 

Suddenly she was back in her dormitory.  A knock on the door, but she was frozen. She simply stared, petrified.  In the corner sat her plant, Lisa, a shriveled husk. A second knock came, louder than the first.  

 

“Max!” came Warren’s voice, but muffled.  

 

Another knock.

 

“Max?!” came a second voice, this one Mr. Jefferson’s.

 

_ knock _

 

“Max, are you in there?”  Nathan this time.

 

**_Knock_ **

 

“Maxine?”  Sean Prescott.  

 

All four voices rang out louder and louder as the knocking got faster and faster, until the door seemed almost to come off its hinges.  It swung inward violently, and she winced backwards, but there was nothing on the other side but blackness. 

 

Max sat for a moment, just staring, as the silence hung over her, deafening in its totality.  

 

She pushed herself to her feet.  

 

One tentative step, then another, then a few more, and she was at the edge.  

 

The blackness swallowed everything ahead.  She put a foot out over it and felt nothing beyond.  

 

“Max!”

 

The shout came from everywhere at once and she nearly fell in.  It was Chloe’s voice. 

 

“Chloe…” she choked, clinging to the doorway as she dropped to her knees in front of the void.

Everything had gone so wrong.  Chloe was dead, Victoria was dead, Nathan and Rachel too, and she wasn’t even sure she was alive anymore either.  Tears began to flow down her face as she lay there against the door, gazing out into the darkness. 

 

But… though her tears, she could make out a faint light, somewhere in the black.  She wiped at her face and looked again. Sure enough, there it was. A faint glimmer, but it was there.  She got to her feet.

 

“...I dare you to…” said Chloe’s voice, barely audible.  

 

She jumped.  

 

* * *

  
  


Max opened her eyes, the light streaming in through the window casting a multicolored haze across the room.  The sheets were warm, and the air smelled faintly of weed and another, sweeter scent…

 

“Chloe?!”

 

“Huh..?”

 

A muffled reply came from somewhere to her left, where a mop of blue protruded over the blankets.  

 

Max felt a warmth bubble in her chest and she scooted closer to pull Chloe into a hug.  

 

Chloe just mumbled and pressed into her embrace, still asleep.  

 

_ This isn’t real _ , Max thought.  

 

She inhaled Chloe’s scent as she held her.  

 

_ Fuck it, I don’t care. _

 

The two lay there, pressed against each other, for what felt to Max like hours.  

 

* * *

 

 

But slowly the light began to fade. Max rolled away, and it winked out. She was alone again.  Or maybe, she thought, she wasn’t. 

 

Max got to her feet in the darkness and turned to see Rachel Amber standing a few feet behind her.  Rachel smiled sadly. 

 

“I’m sorry.  Be ready.”

 

And she snapped her fingers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short In-between chapter, and a chance to see Chloe again, sort of. I'm not entirely happy with this so I may come back and edit it later. Hmmm.


	13. What's Before

Max was back in the bathroom. Time seemed frozen, and Nathan was holding a gun outstretched, pointed directly at Chloe. Her features were frozen in fear. But before Max could fully comprehend the scene, someone shoved her roughly from behind. She stumbled forwards and turned to see Sean Prescott, and behind him, the lighthouse and the storm. 

“You meddling cunt. Sticking your fucking nose where it doesn’t belong. It wasn’t fate that brought you to this bathroom, just dumb fucking luck.”

He pointed at Chloe.

“This whore fucked my son, you know. Sucked his cock for money. All because she had a little problem with drugs. And you can bet she will never have amounted to anything.”

“You shut the fuck up!”

Prescott’s eyebrow rose in amusement.

“Touched a nerve, have I? Is she your lesbian whore girlfriend? Do you finger-fuck girls, you dyke? Or is your new ‘girlfriend’ into something else?”

Max felt a wave of anger wash over her. Prescott had no right.

“I’m going to stop you.”

“You can’t, little girl. All I need to do is be here when it happens. And it will. As soon as you realize that fighting is pointless.”

He reached out and ran a finger along Chloe’s cheek, almost lovingly. Max didn’t know what to do. 

“Or perhaps you will just die tired.”

Max’s head suddenly felt weak, and an all-too-familiar wetness began to seep down her face. Her nose had started to bleed. But, wait, they were in the bathroom… she had an idea. 

Max gritted her teeth and took a step forwards, reaching a hand towards him. 

“You think you can touch me? The shock would kill you. Or maybe that’s what you want? To die? To be with your filthy dyke friend? Don’t let me stop you then, go ahead.”

But Max’s hand remained steady as she fought through the agony and strain, focusing her mind to a laser point on one specific memory. A small hole opened in the wall of the room, and through it fluttered a tiny blue butterfly. 

With its appearance, everything froze. 

All noise in the room stopped, and Prescott stared as it slowly flew towards him. 

Max found herself unable to move, but somehow she knew now that everything had led up to this very moment. 

The butterfly wafted through the air, then landed on Chloe’s frozen shoulder, flapped its wings, and crawled up towards her face, where it rested on her cheek. 

Prescott made an effort to say something, but his words came out soundless. Max focused again on the butterfly. 

“You’re the only one in the world I can trust”

The butterfly seemed to glow as the words emanated from the surrounding walls. 

“Max, I gave you that dream for a reason.” It said.

The butterfly spoke directly to her, or rather, as the pieces began to together, Rachel did. 

“Rachel?” 

The butterfly seemed to flutter affirmatively, if that was possible. 

“You gave me the dream about the storm?” Max asked.

“It led you here, and it led you to Chloe. You avenged my death and brought closure to it all.”

In the background Prescott began yelling and waving his arms, but he was silent and curiously out of focus. 

“But Chloe is dead!” Max yelled, a sob coming out with the last word.

“As am I, but here we are.”

The scene finally began to sink in, and Max felt hot tears began to run down her cheeks. She fell to her knees, staring up at the blue insect perched on her friend. Her mind was racing, the entire situation rapidly moving beyond what she could understand. 

“What do I need to do?” she said, after a moment of complete silence. 

“You? Nothing. The monster will drive itself on its own tusks.”

Max glanced over at Prescott, who was staring daggers at her. 

“What are you?” She said, turning to the butterfly. 

“A memory, and a promise. Nothing more.”

Max was still entirely lost. 

“What’s going on? Please!” He voice went ragged as she pleaded. The tears ran unabated, mingling with the blood from her nose. 

The butterfly seemed to think for a moment, before dropping off Chloe’s face and shifting before her eyes into Rachel Amber. 

“Very well, ask.”

Max swallowed hard, then looked up, all the room fading slowly from view until it was only her, Chloe, and Rachel. 

“How could Prescott do that? The explosion?”

“He used a ritual he learned from my mother. His son was the fuel.”

At her words, Nathan became clearer, his face locked in a mixture of anger, fear, and sadness. 

“Nathan Prescott was always a means to an end. The Caliban to his father’s Prospero. The Tempest seems especially apt with all this, don’t you think?”

Max furrowed her brow, not quite remembering much of her literature class given all that had happened. 

“Wait, did you say your mother?”

“I did, but that’s not important. She is dead now.”

“So are you.”

“Touche, Max.”

Max looked around the blackness they were surrounded by. Nothing in any direction. 

“Why did I get the ability to control time?”

“So you could avenge me,” Rachel said, as though it was obvious. 

“Are you serious?”

Rachel laughed, a beautiful sound that seemed to radiate light in the dark space. 

“There wasn’t much more that I could do, Max. But you were in this place, and when Chloe died, the energy was there. I simply let you do the rest.”  
Max watched as a frozen image of herself taking a picture of the butterfly faded into view. 

“This power, it requires someone to die?”

Rachel grimaced. 

“No, it doesn’t. It requires energy. It just so happens that a person contains quite a bit of that.”

“So like, magic?”

Rachel looked exasperated, and shrugged. 

“I don’t really know, Max. I didn’t really get to talk to my Mother before Prescott, you know…”

Max nodded, sadly, and looked down at her lap. 

“I wish I had more concrete details for you, Max, I really do. But life after death is… different. It makes things both clearer and fuzzier.”

Max bit her lip as she thought. 

“Now what happens?” she asked, after a moment.

Rachel seemed to look wistfully off into the distance, then turned her gaze entirely on Max. 

“Now you get to go back and save the girl, of course. I always did think Tori needed a strong woman in her life.”

Max didn’t know what to say to that. 

“And of course, Prescott falls on his sword. I’ll take care of that much.”

The world began to blur around the edges and Max felt like she was falling. 

“Wait, Rachel…”

Rachel smiled at her, almost sadly.

“Thank you, Max. For everything.”

With that, the room went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally we get a bit of an explanation. Or at least what I can get out of what little exists in canon. I think I tied it up a little, too (even if I stole the way magic works a bit from Dragon Age and did a bit of retconning). 
> 
> But it seems Rachel Amber was behind everything, all along. Who would have guessed? Also Prescott is a fuckin dick.


	14. With Grace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone. From my friends who also write (or wrote) in the LiS fandom, to the various authors who inspired me to write for it. My roommate gets a special shout out for editing it when she could, and so does Dontnod for making one of the most compelling character dramas I've ever seen in video game form. I'm lucky to have been able to play it.
> 
> Enjoy!

Max opened her eyes just as the piece of rebar hit Victoria.  Max watched her eyes go wide, then the color drain out of her face as the metal penetrated her chest.  Max stared in shock as she watched this happen the second time tonight. A small trickle of blood began to seep from Victoria’s mouth as the light in her eyes abruptly went dark. Max’s head throbbed, but less painfully than it had before.  

 

Prescott laughed, but it seemed hollow and tinny, like an old radio.  

 

And then the world slowed further and further, the vortex spinning to a halt, then reversing.  

 

Max pulled her arm back, but the effect was not from her.  She stared, dumbstruck, as the rebar slid its way out of Victoria’s chest, until it hovered several feet away.  

 

Something told her this was her chance, so Max ignored the pain all over her body and ran towards Victoria, shoving her aside just as time resumed.  The rebar swung around the vortex and Prescott stared, dumbstruck, as Max had seemingly disappeared and reappeared instantly. But then there there was another sound, like an axe hitting wood, followed by silence.  

 

Max turned to see Prescott standing where he was, with the metal sticking out of his chest.  He made a wet, gurgling noise, and slumped to the ground, dead. 

 

* * *

 

 

_ Epilogue _

 

“And according to reports, the freak tornado that leveled Blackwell Academy is puzzling scientists from the University of Oregon, more on that story after the…”

 

Max turned off the television, pulling the blanket further up her chest until it was just underneath her chin.  It was surreal, really, the last couple months. But oddly enough, she felt a sense of peace now, as though all had been set right.  A long, slender arm wrapped itself around her from behind, and she pressed herself back against Victoria’s chest, savoring the warmth between the two of them.  

 

“So, Max.  Nothing good on the TV then?”

 

Max shook her head.

 

“Nope, but I think I’ll be okay sitting here anyway.”

 

Victoria squeezed her from behind and kissed the back of her neck, sending goosebumps down Max’s back and a sensation directly between her legs that made her squirm.  

 

“That’s just fine by me,” Victoria said.

 

* * *

 

 

_ Somewhere, Somehow _

  
  


Rachel drifted along the haze of nowhere that seemed to have come with her death.  Strands of time occasionally appeared out of the gloom, but nothing of note since the Prescott problem had been dealt with.  

 

_But_ , she thought, _since that was dealt with, and her powers restored, would she be able to…_

 

The long, branching timelines that seemed to hang in space before her suddenly began moving faster, and in another direction, as though responding to her wishes.  In fact, they were responding to her wishes. Echoes of other places and times filtered through the fog as she floated, until one that felt intimately familiar appeared.

 

She reached out to touch it, and as she made contact the fog parted, revealing dimly lit street, lined with trees and familiar houses.  If she could just slide herself through…

 

She closed her eyes as she felt things sliding back into place.  

 

And then, Rachel Amber opened her eyes, breaking away from the kiss as ash rained down from the nearby wildfire.  Chloe Price blushed bright red and looked back at her, grinning from ear to ear. 

 

“Wow,” she said.

 

Rachel simply smiled.  She could work with this.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, where do we go from here? Maybe I might write some more in LiS, however the Farewell bonus episode in Before the Storm (I had my title first!) has really made me much more open to Pricefield as a ship, so anything going forward may not necessarily be Victoria/Max. I obviously left a bit of a hook for future writing here at the end, so I might do that, or I might even move to another fandom entirely. 
> 
> Lessons learned though, I will absolutely not be posting half-finished fics again, it took me over two years to finish this one, with huge breaks in between. Not acceptable to me. If I post anything in the future it will be complete when posted. 
> 
> Thank you again, and Goodbye! 
> 
> For now.


End file.
